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Book . ' . 1, Aj ^) O 



PRESENTED I?Y 







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THE LAND 




PROPERTY 

IN LAND 

THE CONDITION 
OF LABOR 

BY 

HENRY GEORGE 



4* 



Here is a system which robs the producers of 
wealth as remorselessly and far more regularly and 
systematically than the pirate robs the merchant- 
man. — Tbi Land Question, 



Garden City New York 
DOUBLED AY PAGE & COMPANY 






r 



The Single Tax 

We propose to abolish all taxes save 
one single tax levied on the value of 
land, irrespective of the value of the 
improvements in or on it. 

What we propose is not a tax on 
real estate, for real estate includes 
improvements. Nor is it a tax on 
land, for we would not tax all land, 
but only land having a value irre- 
spective of its improvements, and 
would tax that in proportion to that 
value. 

Our plan involves the imposition of 
no new tax, since we already tax land 
values in taxing real estate. To carry 
it out we have only to abolish all taxes 
save the tax on real estate, and to 
abolish all of that which now falls on 
buildings and improvements, leaving 
only that part of it which now falls on 
the value of the bare land, increasing 
that so as to take as nearly as may be 
the whole of economic rent, or what 
is sometimes styled the ^* unearned in- 
crement of land values.'' 

Henry George 









THE COMPLETE WORKS 
OF HENRY GEORGE 



THE 
LAND QUESTION 

WHAT IT INVOLVES, AND HOW 
ALONE IT CAN BE SETTLED 




Garden City New York 

^x^OUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

MCMXI 



G«t Estate Of 

iiar and Emma Qehrefid 
Nov. 14 1936 






THE 
LAND QUESTION 



WHAT IT INVOLVES, AND HOW ALONE IT CAN 
BE SETTLED 



We hold these truths to be self-evident : That all men are 
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain unalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, 
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just 
powers from the consent of the governed ; that whenever 
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, 
it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. — Declaration 
of Independence. 



Copyright, 1891, by 
Henry George 



PREFACE. 

This book was first published in the early part of 1881, 
under the title of " The Irish Land Question." In order 
better to indicate the general character of this subject, and 
to conform to the title under which it had been republished 
in other countries, the title was subsequently changed to 
"The Land Question." 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Unpalatable Truth 7 

II. Distress and Famine 15 

in. A Universal Questi©n 21 

IV. Prop©sed Eemedies 29 

V. Whose Land is it? 35 

VI. Landlords' Eight is Labor's Wrong 38 

VII. The Great-Great-Grandsgn of Captain Kidd. . 43 

VIII. The Only Way, the Easy Way 52 

IX. Principle the Best Policy 56 

X. Appeals to Animosity .' 60 

XI. How to Win 64 

XII. In the United States 73 

Xni. A Little Island ©r a Little World ..... 76 

XIV. The Civilization that is Possible 80 

XV. The Civilization that is 87 

XVI. True Conservatism 97 

XVII. In Hoc Signo Vinces 106 



THE LAND QUESTION. 



CHAPTER I. 

UNPALATABLE TRUTH. 

IN charging the Dublin jury in the Land League cases, 
Mr. Justice Fitzgerald told them that the land laws of 
Ireland were more favorable to the tenant than those of 
G-reat Britain, Belgium, or the United States. 

As a matter of fact, Justice Fitzgerald is right. For in 
Ireland certain local customs and the provisions of the 
Bright Land Act mitigate somewhat the power of the 
landlord in his dealings with the tenant. In Great Brit- 
ain, save by custom in a few localities, there are no such 
mitigations. In Belgium I believe there are none. There 
are certainly none in the United States. 

This fact which Justice Fitzgerald cites wiU be reechoed 
by the enemies of iie Irish movement. And it is a fact 
well worth the consideration of its friends. For the Irish 
movement has passed its first stage, and it is time for a 
more definite understanding of what is needed and how 
it is to be got. 

It is the fashion of Land League orators and sympa- 
thizing newspapers in this country to talk as if the dis- 
tress and disquiet in Ireland were wholly due to political 
oppression, and our national House of Representatives 



8 THE LAND QUESTION. 

recently passed, by unanimous vote, a resolution which 
censured England for her treatment of Ireland. But, 
while it is indeed true that Ireland has been deeply 
wronged and bitterly oppressed by England, it is not true 
that there is any economic oppression of Ireland by Eng- 
land now. To whatever cause Irish distress may be due, 
it is certainly not due to the existence of laws which press 
on industry more heavily in Ireland than in any other 
part of the United Kingdom. 

And, further than this, the Irish land system, which is 
so much talked of as though it were some peculiarly 
atrocious system, is essentially the same land system 
which prevails in aU civilized countries, which we of the 
United States have accepted unquestioningly, and have 
extended over the whole temperate zone of a new conti- 
nent—the same system which all over the civilized world 
men are accustomed to consider natural and just. 

Justice Fitzgerald is unquestionably right. 

As to England, it is well known that the English land- 
lords exercise freely all the powers complained of in 
the Irish landlords, without even the slight restrictions 
imposed in Ireland. 

As to Belgium, let me quote the high authority of the 
distinguished Belgian publicist, M. Emile de Laveleye, of 
the University of Liege. He says that the Belgian tenant- 
farmers — for tenancy largely prevails even where the land 
is most minutely divided— are rack-rented with a merciless- 
ness unknown in England or even in Ireland, and are 
compelled to vote as their landlords dictate ! 

And as to the United States, let me ask the men who to 
applauding audiences are nightly comparing the freedom 
of America with the oppression of Ireland— let me ask the 
Representatives who voted for the resolution of sympathy 
with Ireland, this simple question : What would the Irish 
landlords lose, what would the Irish tenants gain, if. 



UNPALATABLE TRUTH. 9 

to-morrow, Ireland were made a State in the American 
Union and American law substituted for English law ? 

I think it will puzzle them to reply. The truth is that 
the gain would be to the landlords, the loss to the tenants. 
The simple truth is, that, under our laws, the Irish land- 
lords could rack-rent, distrain, evict, or absent themselves, 
as they pleased, and without any restriction from Ulster 
tenant-right or legal requirement of compensation for 
improvements. Under our laws they could, just as freely 
as they can now, impose whatever terms they pleased upon 
their tenants — whether as to cultivation, as to improve- 
ments, as to game, as to marriages, as to voting, or as to 
anything else. 'For these powers do not spring from 
special laws. They are merely incident to the right of 
property ; they result simply from the acknowledgment of 
the right of the owner of land to do as he pleases with his 
own— to let it, or not let it. So far as law can give them 
to him, every American landlord has these powers as fully 
as any Irish landlord. Cannot the American owner of 
land make, in letting it, any stipulation he pleases as to 
how it shall be used, or improved, or cultivated ? Can he 
not reserve any of his own rights upon it, such as the 
right of entry, or of cutting wood, or shooting game, or 
catching fish ? And, in the absence of special agreement, 
does not American law give him, what the law of Ireland 
does not now give him, the ownership at the expiration 
of the lease of all the improvements made by the tenant ? 

What single power has the Irish landowner that the 
American landowner has not as fully ? Is not the Ameri- 
can landlord just as free as is the Irish landlord to refuse 
to rent his lands or his houses to any one who does not 
attend a certain church or vote a certain ticket ? Is he not 
quite as free to do this as he is free to refuse his contri- 
butions to all but one particular benevolent society or 
political committee? Or, if, not liking a certain news- 



10 THE LAND QUESTION. 

paper, he chooses to give notice to quit to any tenant 
whom he finds taking that newspaper, what law can be 
invoked to prevent him ? There is none. The property 
is his, and he can let it, or not let it, as he wills. And, 
having this power to let or not let, he has power to demand 
any terms he pleases. 

That Ireland is a conquered country ; that centuries ago 
her soil was taken from its native possessors and parceled 
out among aliens, and that it has been confiscated again 
and again, has nothing to do with the real question of 
to-day— no more to do with it than have the confiscations 
of Marius and Sylla. England, too, is a conquered coun- 
try J her soil has been confiscated again and again ; and, 
spite of all talk about Saxon and Celt, it is not probable 
that, after the admixture of generations, the division of 
landholder and non-landholder any more coincides with 
distinction of race in the one country than in the other. 
That Irish land titles rest on force and fraud is true j but 
so do land titles in every country — even to a large extent 
in our own peacefully settled country. Even in our most 
recently settled States, how much land is there to which 
title has been got by fraud and perjury and bribery — by 
the arts of the lobbyist or the cunning tricks of hired 
lawyers, by double-barreled shotguns and repeating rifles ! 

The truth is that the Irish land system is simply the 
general system of modern civilization. In no essential 
feature does it differ from the system that obtains here- 
in what we are accustomed to consider the freest country 
under the sun. Entails and primogeniture and family 
settlements may be in themselves bad things, and may 
sometimes interfere with putting the land to its best use, 
but their effects upon the relations of landlord and tenant 
are not worth talking about. As for rack-rent, which is 
simply a rent fixed at short intervals by competition, that 
is in the United States even a more common way of lettiug 



UNPALATABLE TEUTH. H 

land tliaii in Ireland. In our cities the majority of our 
people live in houses rented from month to month or year 
to year for the highest price the landlord thinks he can 
get. The usual term, in the newer States, at least, for the 
letting of agricultural land is from season to season. And 
that the rent of land in the United States comes, on the 
whole, more closely to the standard of rack, or full com- 
petition rent, there can be, I think, little doubt. That 
the land of Ireland is, as the apologists for landlordism 
say, largely under-rented (that is, not rented for the full 
amount the landlord might get with free competition) is 
probably true. Miss C. G. O'Brien, in a recent article 
in the Nineteenth Century, states that the tenant-farmers 
generally get for such patches as they sub-let to their 
laborers twice the rent they pay the landlords. And we 
hear incidentally of many " good landlords," i.e., landlords 
not in the habit of pushing their tenants for as much as 
they might get by rigorously demanding aU that any one 
would give. 

These things, as well as the peculiar bitterness of com- 
plaints against middlemen and the speculators who have 
purchased encumbered estates and manage them solely 
with a view to profit, go to show the truth of the statement 
that the land of Ireland has been, by its present owners, 
largely underlet, when considered from what we would 
deem a business point of view. And this is but what 
might be expected. Human nature is about the same the 
world over, and the Irish landlords as a class are no 
better nor worse than would be other men under like 
conditions. An aristocracy such as that of Ireland has its 
virtues as well as its vices, and is influenced by sentiments 
which do not enter into mere business transactions— sen- 
timents which must often modify and soften the calcula- 
tions of cold self-interest. But with us the letting of land 
is as much a business matter as the buying or selling of 



12 THE LAND QUESTION. 

wheat or of stocks. An American would not tMnk lie was 
showing Ms goodness by renting his land for low rates, 
any more than he would think he was showing his good- 
ness by selling wheat for less than the market price, or 
stocks for less than the quotations. So in those districts 
of France and Belgium where the land is most sub-divided, 
the peasant proprietors, says M. de Laveleye, boast to one 
another of the high rents they get, just as they boast of 
the high prices they get for pigs or for poultry. 

The best measure of rent is, of course, its proportion 
to the produce. The only estimate of Irish rent as a 
proportion of which I know is that of Buckle, who puts 
it at one-fourth of the produce. In this country I am 
inclined to think one-fourth would generally be considered 
a moderate rent. Even in California there is considerable 
land rented for one-third the crop, and some that rents 
for one-half the crop 5 while, according to a writer in the 
Atlantic Monthly^ the common rent in that great wheat- 
growing section of the New Northwest now being opened 
up is one-half the crop ! 

It does not seem to me that Justice Fitzgerald's state- 
ment can be disputed, though of course its developments 
are not yet as strikingly bad, for this is yet a new country, 
and tenants are comparatively few, and land comparatively 
easy to get. The American land system is really worse 
for the tenant than the Irish system. For with us there 
is neither sentiment nor custom to check the force of 
competition or mitigate the natural desire of the landlord 
to get all he can. 

Nor is there anything in our system to prevent or check 
absenteeism, so much complained of in regard to Ireland. 
Before the modern era, which has so facilitated travel and 
communication, and made the great cities so attractive to 
those having money to spend, the prevalence of Irish 
absenteeism may have been due to special causes, but at 



UNPALATABLE TRUTH. 13 

the present day tliere is certainly notliing pecnliar in it. 
Most of the large English and Scotch landholders are 
absentees for the greater part of the year, and many of 
them live permanently or for long intervals npon the 
Continent. So are our large American landowners gen- 
erally absentees. In New York, in San Francisco, in 
Washington, Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis, live men who 
own large tracts of land which they seldom or never see. 
A resident of Rochester is said to own no less than four 
hundred farms in different States, one of which (I believe 
in Kentucky) comprises thirty-five thousand acres. Under 
the plantation system of farming and that of stock-raising 
on a grand scale, which are developing so rapidly in our 
new States, very much of the profits go to professional 
men and capitahsts who live in distant cities. Corpora- 
tions whose stock is held in the East or in Europe own 
much greater bodies of land, at much greater distances, 
than do the London corporations possessing landed estates 
in Ireland. To say nothing of the great land-grant rail- 
road companies, the Standard Oil Company probably owns 
more acres of Western land than all the London companies 
put together own of Irish land. And, although landlord- 
ism in its grosser forms is only beginning in the United 
States, there is probably no American, wherever he may 
live, who cannot in his immediate vicinity see some 
instance of absentee landlordism. The tendency to con- 
centration born of the new era ushered in by the apphca- 
tion of steam shows itself in this way as in many others. 
To those who can live where they please, the great cities 
are becoming more and more attractive. 

And it is further to be remarked that too much stress 
is laid upon absenteeism, and that it might be prevented 
without much of the evil often attributed to it being 
cured. That is to say, that to his tenantry and neighbor- 
hood the owner of land in Galway or Kilkenny would be 



14 THE LAND QUESTION. 

as mueli an absentee if he lived in Dublin as if lie lived 
in London, and that, if Irish landlords were compelled to 
live in Ireland, all that the Irish people would gain would 
be, metaphorically speaking, the crumbs that fell from 
the landlords' tables. For if the butter and eggs, the pigs 
and the poultry, of the Irish peasant must be taken from 
him and exported to pay for his landlord's wine and cigars, 
what difference does it make to him where the wine is 
drunk or the cigars are smoked ? 



CHAPTER II. 

DISTRESS AND FAMINE. 

BUT it will be asked ; If the land system whicli prevails 
in Ireland is essentially the same as that which pre- 
vails elsewhere, how is it that it does not produce the same 
results elsewhere ? 

I answer that it does everywhere produce the same Mnd 
of results. As there is nothing essentially peculiar in the 
Irish land system, so is there nothing essentially peculiar 
in Irish distress. Between the distress in Ireland and the 
distress in other countries there may be differences in 
degree and differences in manifestation 5 but that is aU. 

The truth is, that as there is nothing peculiar in the 
Irish land system, so is there nothing peculiar in the dis- 
tress which that land system causes. We hear a great 
deal of Irish emigration, of the millions of sons and 
daughters of Erin who have been compelled to leave their 
native soil. But have not the Scottish Highlands been 
all but depopulated ? Do not the English emigrate in the 
same way, and for the same reasons ? Do not the Germans 
and Italians and Scandinavians also emigrate ? Is there 
not a constant emigration from the Eastern States of the 
Union to the "Western— an emigration impelled by the 
same motives as that which sets across the Atlantic ? Nor 
am I sure that this is not in some respects a more demoral- 
izing emigration than the Irish, for I do not think there 
is any such monstrous disproportion of the sexes in Ire- 



16 THE LAND QUESTION. 

land as in Massachusetts. If French and Belgian peasants 
do not emigrate as do the Irish, is it not simply because 
they do not have such " long families " ? 

There has recently been deep and wide-spread distress 
in Ireland, and but for the contributions of charity many 
would have perished for want of food. But, to say nothing 
of such countries as India, China, Persia, and Syria, is it 
not true that within the last few years there have been 
similar spasms of distress in the most highly civilized 
countries— not merely in Russia and in Poland, but in 
Germany and England ? Yes, even in the United States. 

Have there not been, are there not constantly occurring, 
in all these countries, times when the poorest classes are 
reduced to the direct straits, and large numbers are saved 
from starvation only by charity ? 

When there is famine among savages it is because food 
enough is not to be had. But this was not the case in Ire- 
land. In any part of Ireland, during the height of what 
was called the famine, there was food enough for whoever 
had means to pay for it. The trouble was not in the 
scarcity of food. There was, as a matter of fact, no real 
scarcity of food, and the proof of it is that food did not 
command scarcity prices. During all the so-called famine, 
food was constantly exported from Ireland to England, 
which would not have been the case had there been true 
famine in one country any more than in the other. During 
all the so-caUed famine a practically unlimited supply of 
American meat and grain could have been poured into 
Ireland, through the existing mechanism of exchange, so 
quickly that the relief would have been felt instantane- 
ously. Our sending of supplies in a national war-ship 
was a piece of vulgar ostentation, fitly paralleled by their 
ostentatious distribution in British gunboats under the 
nominal superintendence of a royal prince. Had we been 
bent on relief, not display, we might have saved our 



DISTRESS AND FAMINE. 17 

government the expense of fitting up its antiquated war- 
ship, the British gunboats their coal, the Lord Mayor his 
dinner, and the Royal Prince his valuable time. A cable 
draft, turned in Dublin into postal orders, would have 
afforded the relief, not merely much more easily and 
cheaply, but in less time than it took our war-ship to get 
ready to receive her cargo ; for the reason that so many 
of the Irish people were starving was, not that the food 
was not to be had, but that they had not the means to 
buy it. Had the Irish people had money or its equivalent, 
the bad seasons might have come and gone without stinting 
any one of a full meal. Their effect would merely have 
been to determine toward Ireland the flow of more abun- 
dant harvests. 

I wish clearly to bring to view this point. The Irish 
famine was not a true famine arising from scarcity of 
food. It was what an English writer styled the Indian 
famine — a "financial famine," arising not from scarcity of 
food but from the poverty of the people. The effect of 
the short crops in producing distress was not so much in 
raising the price of food as in cutting off the accustomed 
incomes of the people. The masses of the Irish people 
get so little in ordinary times that they are barely able to 
live, and when anything occurs to interrupt their accus- 
tomed incomes they have nothing to fall back on. 

Yet is this not true of large classes in all countries? 
And are not all countries subject to just such famines as 
this Irish famine ? Good seasons and bad seasons are in 
the order of nature, just as the day of sunshine and the 
day of rain, the summer's warmth and the winter's snow. 
But agriculture is, on the whole, as certain as any other 
pursuit, for even those industries which may be carried 
on regardless of weather are subject to alternations as 
marked as those to which agriculture is liable. There are 
good seasons and bad seasons even in fishing and hunting, 



18 THE LAND QUESTION. 

wMle the alternations are very marked in mining and in 
manufacturing. In fact, the more highly differentiated 
branches of industry which advancing civilization tends 
to develop, though less directly dependent upon rain and 
sunshine, heat and cold, seem increasingly subject to 
alternations more frequent and intense. Though in a 
country of more diversified industry the failure of a crop 
or two could not have such wide-spread effects as in Ire- 
land, yet the countries of more complex industries are 
liable to a greater variety of disasters. A war on another 
continent produces famine in Lancashire j Parisian mil- 
liners decree a change of fashion, and Coventry operatives 
are saved from starvation only by public alms ; a railroad 
combination decides to raise the price of coal, and Penn- 
sylvania miners find their earnings diminished by half or 
totally cut off j a bank breaks in New York, and in all the 
large American cities soup-houses must be opened ! 

In this Irish famine which provoked the land agitation, 
there is nothing that is peculiar. Such famines on a 
smaller or a larger scale are constantly occurring. Nay, 
more ! the fact is, that famine, just such famine as this 
Irish famine, constantly exists in the richest and most 
highly civilized lands. It persists even in " good times " 
when trade is '^ booming ; " it spreads and rages whenever 
from any cause industrial depression comes. It is kept 
under, or at least kept from showing its worst phases, by 
poor-rates and almshouses, by private benevolence and by 
vast organized charities, but it still exists, gnawing in 
secret when it does not openly rage. In the very centers 
of civilization, where the machinery of production and 
exchange is at the highest point of ef&ciency, where bank- 
vaults hold millions, and show-windows flash with more 
than a princess ransom, where elevators and warehouses 
are gorged with grain, and markets are piled with all 
things succulent and toothsome, where the dinners of 



DISTRESS AND FAMINE. 19 

Lucullus are eaten every day, and, if it be but cool, the 
very greyhounds wear dainty blankets— in these centers 
of wealth and power and refinement, there are always 
hungry men and women and little children. Never the 
sun goes down but on human beings prowling like wolves 
for food, or huddling together like vermin for shelter and 
warmth. "Always with You" is the significant heading 
under which a New York paper, in these most prosperous 
times, pubhshes daily the tales of chronic famine; and in 
the greatest and richest city in the world— in that very 
London where the plenty of meat in the butchers' shops 
seemed to some savages the most wondrous of all its 
wonderful sights— in that very London, the mortuary 
reports have a standing column for deaths by starvation. 
But no more in its chronic than in its spasmodic forms 
is famine to be measured by the deaths from starvation. 
Perfect, indeed, in all its parts must be the human machine 
if it can run till the last bit of available tissue be drawn 
on to feed its fires. It is under the guise of disease to 
which physicians can give less shocking names, that 
famine— especially the chronic famine of civilization — 
kills. And the statistics of mortality, especially of infant 
mortality, show that in the richest communities famine is 
constantly at its work. Insufficient nourishment, inade- 
quate warmth and clothing, and unwholesome surround- 
ings, constantly, in the very centers of plenty, swell the 
death-rates. What is this but famine— just such famine 
as the Irish famine ? It is not that the needed things are 
reaUy scarce ; but that those whose need is direst have not 
the means to get them, and, when not relieved by charity, 
want kills them in its various ways. When, in the hot 
midsummer, little children die like flies in the New York 
tenement wards, what is that but famine? And those 
barges crowded with such children that a noble and tender 
charity sends down New York Harbor to catch the fresh 



20 THE LAND QUESTION, 

salt breath of the Atlantic— are they not fighting famine 
as truly as were our food-laden war-ship and the Royal 
Prince's gunboats ? Alas ! to find famine one has not to 
cross the sea. 

There was bitter satire in the cartoon that one of our 
illustrated papers published when subscriptions to the 
Irish famine fund were being made — a cartoon that repre- 
sented James Gordon Bennett sailing away for Ireland 
in a boat loaded down with provisions, while a sad-eyed, 
hungry-looking, tattered group gazed wistfuUy on them 
from the pier. The bite and the bitterness of it, the 
humiliating sting and satire of it, were in its truth. 

This is ''the home of freedom," and "the asylum of 
the oppressed -, " our population is yet sparse, our public 
domain yet wide j we are the greatest of food producers, 
yet even here there are beggars, tramps, paupers, men 
torn by anxiety for the support of their families, women 
who know not which way to turn, little children growing 
up in such poverty and squalor that only a miracle can 
keep them pure. " Always with you," even here. What 
is the week or the day of the week that our papers do not 
tell of man or woman who, to escape the tortures of want, 
has stepped out of life unbidden? What is this but 
famine ? 



CHAPTER III. 

A UNIVERSAL QUESTION. 

IET me be understood. I am not endeavoring to ex 
J cuse or belittle Irish distress. I am merely point- 
ing ont that distress of the same kind exists elsewhere 
This is a fact I want to make clear, for it has hitherto, in 
most of the discussions of the Irish Land Question, been 
ignored. And without an appreciation of this fact the 
real nature of the Irish Land Question is not understood, 
nor the real importance of the agitation seen. 

What I contend for is this : That it is a mistake to con- 
sider the Irish Land Question as a mere local question, 
arising out of conditions peculiar to Ireland, and which 
can be settled by remedies that can have but local appli- 
cation. On the contrary, I contend that what has been 
brought into prominence by Irish distress, and forced into 
discussion by Irish agitation, is something infinitely more 
important than any mere local question could be ; it is 
nothing less than that question of transcendent importance 
which is everywhere beginning to agitate, and, if not 
settled, must soon convulse the civilized world— the ques- 
tion whether, their political equality conceded (for, where 
this has not already been, it soon will be), the masses of 
mankind are to remain mere hewers of wood and drawers 
of water for the benefit of a fortunate few? whether, 
having escaped from feudalism, modern society is to pass 
into an industrial organization more grinding and oppres- 



22 THE LAND QUESTION. 

sive, more heartless and hopeless, than feudalism 1 whether, 
amid the abundance their labor creates, the producers of 
wealth are to be content in good times with the barest of 
livings and in bad times to suffer and to starve ? What 
is involved in this Irish Land Question is not a mere local 
matter between Irish landlords and Irish tenants, but the 
great social problem of modern civilization. What is 
arraigned in the arraignment of the claims of Irish land- 
lords is nothing less than the wide-spread institution of 
private property in land. In the assertion of the natural 
rights of the Irish people is the assertion of the natural rights 
that, by virtue of his existence, pertain everywhere to man. 
It is probable that the Irish agitators did not at first 
perceive the real bearing and importance of the question 
they took in hand. But they— the more intelligent and 
earnest of them, at least — must now begin to realize it.* 
Yet, save, perhaps, on the part of the ultra-Tories, who 
would resist any concession as the opening of a door that 
cannot again be shut, there is on all sides a disposition to 
ignore the real nature of the question, and to treat it as 
springing from conditions peculiar to Ireland. On the 
one hand, there is a large class in England and elsewhere, 
who, while willing to concede or even actually desire 
that something should be done for Ireland, fear any 
extension of the agitation into a questioning of the rights 
of landowners elsewhere. And, on the other hand, the 
Irish leaders seem anxious to confine attention in the same 
way, evidently fearing that, should the question assume 
a broader aspect, strong forces now with them might fall 
away and, perhaps to a large extent, become directly and 
strongly antagonistic. 

* The Irish World, which, though published in New York, has 
exerted a large influence upon the agitation on both sides of the 
Atlantic, does realize, and has from the first frankly declared, that 
the fight must be against landlordism in toto and everywhere. 



A UNIVERSAL QUESTION. 23 

But it is not possible so to confine the discussion j no 
more possible than it was possible to confine to France 
the questions involved in the French Revolution; no 
more possible than it was possible to keep the discussion 
which arose over slavery in the Territories confined to the 
subject of slavery in the Territories. And it is best that 
the truth be fully stated and clearly recognized. He who 
sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is 
for it or who is against it. This is not radicalism in the 
bad sense which so many attach to the word. This is 
conservatism in the true sense. 

What gives to the Irish Land Question its supreme 
significance is that it brings into attention and discussion 
— nay, that it forces into attention and discussion, not a 
mere Irish question, but a question of world-wide impor- 
tance. 

What has brought the land question to the front in 
Ireland, what permits the relation between land and labor 
to be seen there with such distinctness — to be seen even 
by those who cannot in other places perceive them— is 
certain special conditions. Ireland is a country of dense 
population, so that competition for the use of land is so 
sharp and high as to produce marked effects upon the 
distribution of wealth. It is mainly an agricultural coun- 
try, so that production is concerned directly and unmis- 
takably with the soil. Its industrial organization is largely 
that simple one in which an employing capitalist does not 
stand between laborer and landowner, so that the connec- 
tion between rent and wages is not obscured. Ireland, 
moreover, was never conquered by the Romans, nor, until 
comparatively recently, by any people who had felt in their 
legal system the effect of Roman domination. It is the 
European country in which primitive ideas as to land 
tenures have longest held their sway, and the circum- 
stances of its conquest, its cruel misgovernment, and the 



24 THE LAND QUESTION. 

differences of race and religion between the masses of the 
people and those among whom the land was parceled, 
have tended to preserve old traditions and to direct the 
strength of Irish feeling and the fervor of Irish imagina- 
tion against a system which forces the descendant of the 
ancient possessors of the soil to pay tribute for it to the 
representative of a hated stranger. It is for these reasons 
that the connection between Irish distress and Irish land- 
lordism is so easily seen and readily realized. 

But does not the same relation exist between English 
pauperism and English landlordism— between American 
tramps and the American land system? Essentially the 
same land system as that of Ireland exists elsewhere, and, 
wherever it exists, distress of essentially the same kind is 
to be seen. And elsewhere, just as certainly as in Ireland, 
is the connection between the two that of cause and effect. 

When the agent of the Irish landlord takes from the 
Irish cottier for rent his pigs, his poultry, or his potatoes, 
or the money that he gains by the sale of these things, it 
is clear enough that this rent comes from the earnings of 
labor, and diminishes what the laborer gets. But is not 
this in reality just as clear when a dozen middlemen stand 
between laborer and landlord? Is it not just as clear 
when, instead of being paid monthly or quarterly or 
yearly, rent is paid in a lumped sum called purchase- 
money? Whence come the incomes which the owners 
of land in mining districts, in manufacturing districts, or 
in commercial districts, receive for the use of their land ? 
Manifestly, they must come from the earnings of labor— 
there is no other source from which they can come. From 
what are the revenues of Trinity Church corporation 
drawn, if not from the earnings of labor ? What is the 
source of the income of the Astors, if it is not the labor 
of laboring-men, women, and children? When a man 
makes a fortune by the rise of real estate, as in New York 



A UNIVERSAL QUESTION. 25 

and elsewhere many men have done within the past few 
months, what does it mean ? It means that he may have 
fine clothes, costly food, a grand house luxuriously fur- 
nished, etc. Now, these things are not the spontaneous 
fruits of the soil ; neither do they fall from heaven, nor 
are they cast up by the sea. They are products of labor 
—can be produced only by labor. And hence, if men 
who do no labor get them, it must necessarily be at the 
expense of those who do labor. 

It may seem as if I were needlessly dwelling upon a 
truth apparent by mere statement. Yet, simple as this 
truth is, it is persistently ignored. This is the reason 
that the true relation and true importance of the question 
which has come to the front in Ireland are so Httle realized. 

To give an illustration : In his article in the North 
American Review last year, Mr. Parnell speaks as though 
the building up of manufactures in Ireland would lessen 
the competition for land. What justification for such a 
view is there either in theory or in fact ? Can manufac- 
turing be carried on without land any more than agricul- 
ture can be carried on without land ? Is not competition 
for land measured by price, and, if Ireland were a manu- 
facturing country, would not the value of her land be 
greater than now ? Had EngHsh clamor for " protection 
to home industry " not been suffered to secure the stran- 
gling of Irish industries in their infancy, Ireland might 
now be more of a manufacturing country with larger 
population and a greater aggregate production of wealth. 
But the tribute which the landowners could have taken 
would likewise have been greater. Put a Glasgow, a 
Manchester, or a London in one of the Irish agricultural 
counties, and, where the landlords now take pounds in 
rent, they would be enabled to demand hundreds and 
thousands of pounds. And it would necessarily come 
from the same source— the ultimate source of all incomes 



26 THE LAND QUESTION. 

—the earnings of labor. That so large a proportion of 
the laboring-class would not have to compete with each 
other for agricultural land is true. But they would have 
to do what is precisely the same thing. They would have 
to compete with each other for employment— for the 
opportunity to make a living. And there is no reason to 
think that this competition would be less intense than 
now. On the contrary, in the manufacturing districts of 
England and Scotland, just as in the agricultural districts 
of Ireland, the competition for the privilege of earning a 
living forces wages to such a minimum as, even in good 
times, will give only a living. 

What is the difference ? The Irish peasant cultivator 
hires his little farm from a landlord, and pays rent directly. 
The English agricultural laborer hires himself to an 
employing farmer who hires the land, and who out of the 
produce pays to the one his wages and to the other his 
rent. In both cases competition forces the laborer down 
to a bare living as a net return for his work, and only 
stops at that point because, when men do not get enough 
to live on, they die and cease to compete. And, in the 
same way, competition forces the employing farmer to 
give up to the landlord all that he has left after paying 
wages, save the ordinary returns of capital— for the profits 
of the English farmer do not, on the average, I understand, 
exceed five 6y six per cent. And in other businesses, such 
as manufacturing, competition in the same way forces 
down wages to the minimum of a bare living, while rent 
goes up and up. Thus is it clear that no change in 
methods or improvements in the processes of industry 
lessens the landlord's power of claiming the lion's share. 

I am utterly unable to see in what essential thing the 
condition of the Irish peasant would be a whit improved 
were Ireland as rich as England, and her industries as 
diversified. For the Irish peasant is not to be compared 



A UNIVEESAL QUESTION. 27 

with the English tenant-farmer, who is really a capitalist, 
but with the English agricultural laborer and the lowest 
class of factory operatives. Surely their condition is not 
so much better than that of the Irish peasant as to make 
a difference worth talking about. On the contrary, miser- 
able as is the condition of the Irish peasantry, sickening 
as are the stories of their suffering, I am inchned to think 
that for the worst instances of human degradation one 
must go to the reports that describe the condition of the 
laboring poor of England, rather than to the literature of 
Irish misery. For there are three things for which, in 
spite of their poverty and wretchedness and occasional 
famine, the very poorest of Irish peasants are by all 
accounts remarkable — the physical vigor of their men, the 
purity of their women, and the strength of the family 
affections. This, to put it mildly, cannot be said of large 
classes of the laboring populations of England and Scot- 
land. In those rich manufacturing districts are classes 
stunted and deteriorated physically by want and unwhole- 
some employments ; classes in which the idea of female 
virtue is all but lost, and the family affections all but 
trodden out. 

But it is needless to compare sufferings and measure 
miseries. I merely wish to correct that impression which 
leads so many people to talk and write as though rent and 
land tenures related solely to agriculture and to agricul- 
tural communities. Nothing could be more erroneous. 
Land is necessary to all production, no matter what be 
its kind or form ; land is the standing-place, the workshop, 
the storehouse of labor ; it is to the human being the only 
means by which he can obtain access to the material 
universe or utilize its powers. Without land man cannot 
exist. To whom the ownership of land is given, to him is 
given the virtual ownership of the men who must live 
upon it. When this necessity is absolute, then does he 



28 THE LAND QUESTION. 

necessarily become their absolute master. And just as 
this point is neared— that is to say, just as competition 
increases the demand for land— just in that degree does 
the power of taking a larger and larger share of the earn- 
ings of labor increase. It is this power that gives land 
its value ; this is the power that enables the owner of valu- 
able land to reap where he has not sown— to appropriate 
to himself wealth which he has had no share in producing. 
Rent is always the devourer of wages. The owner of city 
land takes, in the rents he receives for his land, the earn- 
ings of labor just as clearly as does the owner of farming 
land. And whether he be working in a garret ten stories 
above the street, or in a mining drift thousands of feet 
below the earth's surface, it is the competition for the use 
of land that ultimately determines what proportion of the 
produce of his labor the laborer will get for himself. This 
is the reason why modern progress does not tend to extir- 
pate poverty ; this is the reason why, with all the inventions 
and improvements and economies which so enormously 
increase productive power, wages everywhere tend to the 
minimum of a bare living. The cause that in Ireland 
produces poverty and distress— the ownership by some of 
the people of the land on which and from which the whole 
people must live— everywhere else produces the same 
results. It is this that produces the hideous squalor of 
London and Glasgow slums ; it is this that makes want 
jostle luxury in the streets of rich New York, that forces 
little children to monotonous and stunting toil in Massa- 
chusetts mills, and that fills the highways of our newest 
States with tramps. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PROPOSED REMEDIES. 

THE facts we have been considering give to the Irish 
agitation a significance and dignity that no effort 
for the redress of merely local grievances, no struggle for 
mere national independence could have. As the cause 
which produces Irish distress exists everywhere throughout 
modern civilization, and everywhere produces the same 
results, the question as to what measures will fully meet 
the case of Ireland has for us not merely a speculative 
and sentimental interest, but a direct and personal interest. 

For a year and more the English journals and magazines 
have been teeming with articles on the Irish Land Ques- 
tion J but, among all the remedies proposed, even by men 
whose reputation is that of clear thinkers and advanced 
Liberals, I have seen nothing which shows any adequate 
grasp of the subject. And this is true also of the mea- 
sures proposed by the agitators, so far as they have pro- 
posed any. They are illogical and insufficient to the last 
degree. They neither disclose any clear principle nor do 
they aim at any result worth the struggle. 

From the most timid to the most radical, these schemes 
are restricted to one or more of the following proposi- 
tions : 

1st. To abolish entails and primogenitures and other 
legal difficulties in the way of sales. 

2d. To legalize and extend tenant-right. 



30 THE LAND QUESTION. 

3d. To establisli tribunals of arbitrament whicli shall 
decide upon appeal tbe rent to be paid. 

4tli. To have the State buy out the landlords and sell 
again on time to the tenants. 

The first of these propositions is good in itself. To 
make the transfer of land easy would be to remove obsta- 
cles which prevent its passing into the hands of those who 
would make the most out of it. But, so far as this will 
have any effect at all, it will not be toward giving the 
Irish tenants more merciful landlords ; nor yet will it be 
to the diffusion of landed property. Those who think so 
shut their eyes to the fact that the tendency of the time 
is to concentration. 

As for the propositions which look in various forms to 
the establishment of tenant-right, it is to be observed that, 
in so far as they go beyond giving the tenant surety for 
his improvements, they merely carve out of the estate of 
the landlord an estate for the tenant. Even if the pro- 
posal to empower the courts, in cases of dispute, to decide 
what is a fair rent were to amount to anything (and the 
Land Leaguers say it would not), the fixing of a lower 
rent as the share of the landlord would merely enable the 
tenant to charge a higher price to his successor. What- 
ever might thus be done for present agricultural tenants 
would be of no use to future tenants, and nothing what- 
ever would be done for the masses of the people. In fact, 
that the effect would be to increase rent in the aggregate 
there can be no doubt. Whatever modification might be 
x^c^de in the landlord's demands, the sum which the out- 
going tenant would ask would be very certain to be all he 
could possibly get, so that rent in the aggregate, instead 
of being diminished, would be screwed up to the fuU 
competition or rack-rent standard. 

What seem to be considered the most radical proposi- 
tions yet made are those for the creation of a '^peasant 



PROPOSED REMEDIES. 31 

proprietary "—the State to buy out the landlords and resell 
to the tenants, for annual payments extending over a term 
of years, and covering principal and interest. Waiving 
all practical difficulties, and they are very great, what 
could thus be accomplished ? Nothing real and permanent. 
For not merely is this, too, but a partial measure, which 
could not improve the condition of the masses of the people 
or help those most needing help, but no sooner were the 
lands thus divided than a process of concentration would 
infallibly set in which would be all the more rapid from 
the fact that the new landholders would be heavily mort- 
gaged. The tendency to concentration which has so 
steadily operated in Great Britaia, and is so plainly show- 
ing itself in our new States, must operate in Ireland, and 
would immediately begin to weld together again the little 
patches of the newly created peasant proprietors. The 
tendency of the time is against peasant proprietorships ; 
it is in everything to concentration, not to separation. 
The tendency which has wiped out the small landowners, 
the boasted yeomanry, of England— which in our new 
States is uniting the quarter-sections of preemption and 
homestead settlers into great farms of thousands of acres 
—is already too strong to be resisted, and is constantly 
becoming stronger and more penetrating. For it springs 
from the inventions and improvements and economies 
which are transforming modern industry —the same influ- 
ences which are concentrating population in large cities, 
business into the hands of great houses, and for the 
blacksmith making his own nails or the weaver working his 
own loom substitute the factory of the great corporation. 
That a great deal that the English advocates of 
peasant proprietorship have to say about the results of 
their favorite system in continental Europe is not borne 
out by the facts, any one who chooses to look over the 
testimony may see. But it is useless to discuss that. 



32 THE LAND QUESTION. 

Peasant proprietorship in continental Europe is a sur- 
vival. It exists only among populations which have not 
felt fully the breath of the new era. It continues to exist 
only by virtue of conditions which do not obtain in Ireland. 
The Irish peasant is not the French or Belgian peasant. 
He is in the habit of having very ''long families," they 
very short ones. He has become familiar with the idea 
of emigrating ; they have not. He can hardly be expected 
to have acquired those habits of close economy and careful 
forethought for which they are so remarkable ; and there 
are various agencies, among which are to be counted the 
national schools and the reaction from America, that have 
roused in him aspirations and ambitions which would 
prevent him from continuing to water his little patch 
with his sweat, as do the French and Belgian peasant 
proprietors, when he could seU it for enough to emigrate. 
Peasant proprietorship, like that of France and Belgium, 
might possibly have been instituted in Ireland some time 
ago, before the railroad and the telegraph and the national 
schools and the establishment of the steam bridge across 
the Atlantic. But to do it now to any extent, and with 
any permanency, seems to me about as practicable as to 
go back to hand-loom weaving in Manchester. Much 
more in accordance with modern tendencies is the notice 
I have recently seen of the formation of a compa^iy to 
buy up land in Southern Ireland, and cultivate it on a 
large scale ; for to production on a large scale modern 
processes more and more strongly tend. It is not merely 
the steam-plow and harvesting machinery that make the 
cultivation of the large field more profitable than that of 
tne small one ; it is the railroad, the telegraph, the mani- 
fold inventions of all sorts. Even butter and cheese are 
now made and chickens hatched and fattened in factories. 
But the fatal defect of aU these schemes as remedial 
measures is, that they do not go to the cause of the disease. 



PROPOSED EEMEDIE-S. 33 

What they propose to do, they propose to do for merely 
one class of the Irish people— the agricultural tenants. 
Now, the agricultural tenants are not so large nor so poor 
a class (among them are in fact many large capitalist 
farmers of the English type) as the agricultural laborers, 
while besides these there are the laborers of other kinds — 
the artisans, operatives, and poorer classes of the cities. 
What extension of tenant-right or conversion of tenant- 
farmers into partial or absolute proprietors is to benefit 
them ? Even if the number of owners of Irish soil could 
thus be increased, the soil of Ireland would still be in the 
hands of a class, though of a somewhat larger class. And 
the spring of Irish misery would be untouched. Those 
who had merely their labor would be as badly off as now, 
if not in some respects worse off. Rent would soon devour 
wages, and the injustice involved in the present system 
would be intrenched by the increase in the number who 
seemingly profit by it. 

It is that peasant proprietors would strengthen the 
existing system that makes schemes for creating them so 
popular among certain sections of the propertied classes 
of G-reat Britain. This is the ground on which these 
schemes are largely urged. These small landowners are 
desired that they may be used as a buffer and bulwark 
against any questioning of the claims of the larger owners. 
They would be put forward to resist the shock of '' agrari- 
anism," just as the women are put forward in resistance 
to the process-servers. " What ! do you propose to rob 
these poor peasants of their little homesteads?'' would be 
the answer to any one who proposed to attack the system 
under which the larger landholders draw millions annually 
from the produce of labor. 

And here is the danger in the adoption of measures not 
based upon correct principles. They fail not only to do 
any real and permanent good, but they make proper 



34 THE LAND QUESTION. 

measures more difficult. Even if a majority of the people 
of Ireland were made the owners of the soil, the injustice 
to the minority would be as great as now, and wages 
would still tend to the minimum, which in good times 
means a bare living, and in bad times means starvation. 
Even were it possible to cut up the soil of Ireland into 
those little patches into which the soil of France and 
Belgium is cut in the districts where the morcellement 
prevails, this would not be the attainment of a just and 
healthy social state. But it would make the attainment 
of a just and healthy social state much more difficult. 



CHAPTER V. 

WHOSE LAND IS IT? 

WHAT, then, is the true solution of the Irish problem ? 
The answer is as important to other countries as 
to Ireland, for the Irish problem is but a local phase of 
the great problem which is everywhere pressing upon the 
civilized world. 

With the leaders of the Irish movement, the question 
is, of course, not merely what ought to be done, but what 
can be done. But, to a clear understanding of the whole 
subject, the question of principle must necessarily precede 
that of method. We must decide where we want to go 
before we can decide what is the best road to take. 

The first question that naturally arises is that of right. 
Among whatever kind of people such a matter as this is 
discussed, the question of right is sure to be raised. This, 
to me, seems a very significant thing ; for I believe it to 
spring from nothing less than a universal perception of 
the human mind— a perception often dim and vague, yet 
stiU a universal perception, that justice is the supreme law 
of the universe, so that, as a short road to what is best, 
we instinctively ask what is right 1 

Now, what are the rights of this case ? To whom right- 
fully does the soil of Ireland belong? Who are justly 
entitled to its use and to aU the benefits that flow from its 
use? Let us settle this question clearly and decisively, 
before we attempt anything else. 



36 THE LAND QUESTION. 

Let me go to the heart of this question by asking 
another question : Has or has not the child born in Ireland 
a right to live 1 There can be but one answer, for no one 
would contend that it was right to drown Irish babies, or 
that any human law could make it right. Well, then, if 
every human being born in Ireland has a right to live in 
Ireland, these rights must be equal. If each one has a 
right to live, then no one can have any better right to live 
than any other one. There can be no dispute about this. 
No one will contend that it would be any less a crime to 
drown a baby of an Irish peasant woman than it would 
be to drown the baby of the proudest duchess, or that a 
law commanding the one would be any more justifiable 
than a law commanding the other. 

Since, then, all the Irish people have the same equal 
right to life," it follows that they must all have the same 
equal right to the land of Ireland. If they are all in Ire- 
land by the same equal permission of Nature, so that no 
one of them can justly set up a superior claim to life than 
any other one of them ; so that all the rest of them could 
not justly say to any one of them, " You have not the same 
right to live as we have ; therefore we will pitch you out 
of Ireland into the sea ! " then they must all have the 
same equal rights to the elements which Nature has pro- 
vided for the sustaining of life— to air, to water, and to 
land. For to deny the equal right to the elements neces- 
sary to the maintaining of life is to deny the equal right 
to life. Any law that said, " Certain babies have no right 
to the soil of Ireland ; therefore they shall be thrown off 
the soil of Ireland ; " would be precisely equivalent to a 
law that said, "Certain babies have no right to live; 
therefore they shall be thrown into the sea." And as no 
law or custom or agreement can justify the denial of the 
equal right to life, so no law or custom or agreement can 
justify the denial of the equal right to land. 



WHOSE LAND IS IT? 37 

It therefore follows, from the very fact of their exis- 
tence, that the right of each one of the people of Ireland 
to an equal share in the land of Ireland is equal and 
inalienable : that is to say, that the use and benefit of the 
land of Ireland belong rightfully to the whole people of 
Ireland, to each one as much as to every other ; to no one 
more than to any other— not to some individuals, to the 
exclusion of other individuals j not to one class, to the 
exclusion of other classes ; not to landlords, not to tenants, 
not to cultivators, but to the whole people. 

This right is irrefutable and indefeasible. It pertains 
to and springs from the fact of existence, the right to live. 
No law, no covenant, no agreement, can bar it. One 
generation cannot stipulate away the rights of another 
generation. If the whole people of Ireland were to unite 
in bargaining away their rights in the land, how could 
they justly bargain away the right of the child who the 
next moment is born ? No one can bargain away what is 
not his ; no one can stipulate away the rights of another. 
And if the new-born infant has an equal right to life, then 
has it an equal right to land. Its warrant, which comes 
direct from Nature, and which sets aside aU human laws 
or title-deeds, is the fact that it is born. 

Here we have a firm, self-apparent principle from which 
we may safely proceed. The land of Ireland does not 
belong to one individual more than to another individual ; 
to one class more than to another class ; to one generation 
more than to the generations that come after. It belongs 
to the whole people who at the time exist upon it. 



CHAPTER VI. 
landlords' right is labor's wrong. 

I DO not dwell upon this principle because it lias not 
yet been asserted. I dwell upon it because, although 
it has been asserted, no proposal to carry it out has yet 
been made. The cry has indeed gone up that the land of 
Ireland belongs to the people of Ireland, but there the 
recognition of the principle has stopped. To say that the 
land of Ireland belongs to the people of Ireland, and then 
merely to ask that rents shall be reduced, or that tenant- 
right be extended, or that the State shall buy the land 
from one class and sell it to another class, is utterly 
illogical and absurd. 

Either the land of Ireland rightfully belongs to the 
Irish landlords, or it rightfully belongs to the Irish people ; 
there can be no middle ground. If it rightfully belongs 
to the landlords, then is the whole agitation wrong, and 
every scheme for interfering in any way with the land- 
lords is condemned. If the land rightfully belongs to the 
landlords, then it is nobody else's business what they do 
with it, or what rent they charge for it, or where or how 
they spend the money they draw from it, and whoever 
does not want to live upon it on the landlords' terms is at 
perfect liberty to starve or emigrate. But if, on the con- 
trary, the land of Ireland rightfully belongs to the Irish 
people, then the only logical demand is, not that the 
tenants shall be made joint owners with the landlords, 



LANDLORDS' EIGHT IS LABOR'S WRONG. 39 

not that it be bought from a smaller class and sold to a 
larger class, but that it be resumed by the whole people. 
To propose to pay the landlords for it is to deny the right 
of the people to it. The real fight for Irish rights must 
be made outside of Ireland; and, above all things, the 
Irish agitators ought to take a logical position, based upon 
a broad, clear principle which can be everywhere under- 
stood and appreciated. To ask for tenant-right or peasant 
proprietorship is not to take such a position ; to concede 
that the landlords ought to be paid is utterly to abandon 
the principle that the land belongs rightfully to the people. 

To admit, as even the most radical of the Irish agitators 
seem to admit, that the landlords should be paid the value 
of their lands, is to deny the rights of the people. It is 
an admission that the agitation is an interference with 
the just rights of property. It is to ignore the only prin- 
ciple on which the agitation can be justified, and on which 
it can gather strength for the accomplishment of anything 
real and permanent. To admit this is to admit that the 
Irish people have no more right to the soil of Ireland than 
any outsider. For, any outsider can go to Ireland and 
buy land, if he will give its market value. To propose to 
buy out the landlords is to propose to continue the present 
injustice in another form. They would get in interest on 
the debt created what they now get in rent. They would 
still have a lien upon Irish labor. 

And why should the landlords be paid ? If the land of 
Ireland belongs of natural right to the Irish people, what 
valid claim for payment can be set up by the landlords ? 
No one will contend that the land is theirs of natural 
right, for the day has gone by when men could be told 
that the Creator of the universe intended his bounty for 
the exclusive use and benefit of a privileged class of his 
creatures— that he intended a few to roll in luxury while 
their feUows toiled and starved for them. The claim of 



40 THE LAND QUESTION. 

the landlords to the land rests not on natural right, but 
merely on municipal law — on municipal law which con- 
travenes natural right. And, whenever the sovereign 
power changes municipal law so as to conform to natural 
right, what claim can they assert to compensation ? Some 
of them bought their lands, it is true 5* but they got no 
better title than the seller had to give. And what are 
these titles? Titles based on murder and robbery, on 
blood and rapine— titles which rest on the most atrocious 
and wholesale crimes. Created by force and maintained 
by force, they have not behind them the first shadow of 
right. That Henry II. and James I. and Cromwell and 
the Long Parliament had the power to give and grant 
Irish lands is true ; but wiU any one contend they had the 
right 1 Will any one contend that in aU the past genera- 
tions there has existed on the British Isles or anywhere 
else any human being, or any number of human beings, 
who had the right to say that in the year 1881 the great 
mass of Irishmen should be compelled to pay— in many 
cases to residents of England, France, or the United States 
—for the privilege of living in their native country and 
making a living from their native soil ? Even if it be said 
that might makes right 5 even if it be contended that in 
the twelfth, or seventeenth, or eighteenth century lived 
men who, having the power, had therefore the right, to give 
away the soil of Ireland, it cannot be contended that their 
right went further than their power, or that their gifts and 
grants are binding on the men of the present generation. 
No one can urge such a preposterous doctrine. And, if 
might makes right, then the moment the people get power 
to take the land the rights of the present landholders 
utterly cease, and any proposal to compensate them is a 
proposal to do a fresh wrong. 

Should it be urged that, no matter on what they origi- 
nally rest, the lapse of time has given to the legal owners 



LANDLORDS' RiaHT IS LABOR'S WRONG. 41 

of Irish land a title of wMcli they cannot now be justly 
deprived without compensation, it is sufficient to ask, with 
Herbert Spencer, at what rate per annum wrong becomes 
right? Even the shallow pretense that the acquiescence 
of society can vest in a few the exclusive right to that 
element on which and from which Nature has ordained 
that all must live, cannot be urged in the case of Ireland. 
For the Irish people have never acquiesced in their spolia- 
tion, unless the bound and gagged victim may be said to 
acquiesce in the robbery and maltreatment which he 
cannot prevent. Though the memory of their ancient 
rights in the land of their country may have been utterly 
stamped out among the people of England, and have been 
utterly forgotten among their kin on this side of the sea, 
it has long survived among the Irish. If the Irish people 
have gone hungry and cold and ignorant, if they have 
been evicted from lands on which their ancestors had lived 
from time immemorial, if they have been forced to emi- 
grate or to starve, it has not been for the want of protest. 
They have protested all they could 5 they have struggled 
all they could. It has been but superior force that has 
stifled their protests and made their struggles vain. In 
a blind, dumb way, they are protesting now and strug- 
gling now, though even if their hands were free they 
might not at first know how to untie the knots in the cords 
that bind them. But acquiesce they never have. 

Yet, even supposing they had aquiesced, as in their 
ignorance the working-classes of such countries as Eng- 
land and the United States now acquiesce, in the iniquitous 
system which makes the common birthright of all the 
exclusive property of some. What then? Does such 
acquiescence turn wrong into right? If the sleeping 
traveler wake to find a robber with his hand in his pocket, 
is he bound to buy the robber off— bound not merely to 
let him keep what he has previously taken, but pay him 



42 THE LAND QUESTION. 

the full value of all lie expected the sleep of his victim to 
permit him to get 1 If the stockholders of a bank find 
that for a long term of years their cashier has been appro- 
priating the lion's share of the profits, are they to be told 
that they cannot discharge him without paying him for 
what he might have got, had his peculations not been 
discovered ? 



CHAPTER Vn. 

THE GREAT-GREAT-GRANDSON OF CAPTAIN KTDD. 

I APOLOGIZE to the Irish landlords and to all other 
landlords for likening them to thieves and robbers. 
I trust they will understand that I do not consider them 
as personally worse than other men, but that I am obliged 
to use such illustrations because no others will fit the case. 
I am concerned not with individuals, but with the system. 
What I want to do is, to point out a distinction that in 
the plea for the vested rights of landowners is ignored— 
a distinction which arises from the essential difference 
between land and things that are the produce of human 
labor, and which is obscured by our habit of classing 
them all together as property. 

The galleys that carried Caesar to Britain, the accoutre- 
ments of his legionaries, the baggage that they carried, 
the arms that they bore, the buildings that they erected ; 
the scji^hed chariots of the ancient Britons, the horses 
that drew them, their wicker boats and wattled houses— 
where are they now ? But the land for which Roman and 
Briton fought, there it is still. That British soil is yet 
as fresh and as new as it was in the days of the Romans. 
Generation after generation has lived on it since, and 
generation after generation will live on it yet. Now, here 
is a very great difference. The right to possess and to 
pass on the ownership of things that in their nature decay 
and soon cease to be is a very different thing from the 



44 THE LAND QUESTION. 

right to possess and to pass on the ownership of that 
which does not decay, but from which each successive 
generation must live. 

To show how this difference between land and such 
other species of property as are properly styled wealth 
bears upon the argument for the vested rights of land- 
holders, let me illustrate again. 

Captain Kidd was a pirate. He made a business of 
sailing the seas, capturing merchantmen, making their 
crews walk the plank, and appropriating their cargoes. In 
this way he accumulated much wealth, which he is thought 
to have buried. But let us suppose, for the sake of the 
illustration, that he did not bury his wealth, but left it 
to his legal heirs, and they to their heirs and so on, until 
at the present day this wealth or a part of it has come 
to a great-great-grandson of Captain Kidd. Now, let us 
suppose that some one — say a great-great-grandson of one 
of the shipmasters whom Captain Kidd plundered, makes 
complaint, and says : '^ This man's great-great-grandfather 
plundered my great-great-grandfather of certain things 
or certain sums, which have been transmitted to him, 
whereas but for this wrongful act they would have been 
transmitted to me 5 therefore, I demand that he be made 
to restore them." What would society answer ? 

Society, speaking by its proper tribunals, and in accor- 
dance with principles recognized among all civilized na- 
tions, would say : " "We cannot entertain such a demand. 
It may be true that Mr. Kidd's great-great-grandfather 
robbed your great-great-grandfather, and that as the result 
of this wrong he has got things that otherwise might have 
come to you. But we cannot inquire into occurrences 
that happened so long ago. Each generation has enough 
to do to attend to its own affairs. If we go to righting 
the wrongs and reopening the controversies of our great- 
great-grandfathers, there will be endless disputes and 



THE GEEAT-aREAT-GEANDSON OF CAPTAIN KIDD. 45 

pretexts for dispute. What yon say may be true, but 
somewhere we must draw the line, and have an end to 
strife. Though this man's great-great-grandfather may 
have robbed your great-great-grandfather, Jie has not 
robbed you. He came into possession of these things 
peacefully, and has held them peacefully, and we must 
take this peaceful possession, when it has been continued 
for a certain time, as absolute evidence of just title ; for, 
were we not to do that, there would be no end to dispute 
and no secure possession of anything." 

Now, it is this common-sense principle that is expressed 
in the statute of limitations— in the doctrine of vested 
rights. This is the reason why it is held— and as to most 
things held justly— that peaceable possession for a certain 
time cures all defects of title. 

But let us pursue the illustration a little further : 

Let us suppose that Captain Kidd, having established 
a large and profitable piratical business, left it to his son, 
and he to his son, and so on, until the great-great-grand- 
son, who now pursues it, has come to consider it the most 
natural thing in the world that his ships should roam the 
sea, capturing peaceful merchantmen, making their crews 
walk the plank, and bringing home to him much plunder, 
whereby he is enabled, though he does no work at all, to 
live in very great luxury, and look down with contempt 
upon people who have to work. But at last, let us sup- 
pose, the merchants get tired of having their ships sunk 
and their goods taken, and sailors get tired of trembling 
for their lives every time a sail lifts above the horizon, 
and they demand of society that piracy be stopped. 

Now, what should society say if Mr. Kidd got indignant, 
appealed to the doctrine of vested rights, and asserted 
that society was bound to prevent any interference with 
the business that he had inherited, and that, if it wanted 
him to stop, it must buy him out, paying him all that his 



46 THE LAND QUESTION. 

business was worth— that is to say, at least as much as he 
could make in twenty years' successful pirating, so that 
if he stopped pirating he could still continue to live in 
luxury off of the profits of the merchants and the earnings 
of the sailors ? 

What ought society to say to such a claim as this? 
There will be but one answer. We will all say that society 
should tell Mr. Kidd that his was a business to which the 
statute of limitations and the doctrine of vested rights 
did not apply 5 that because his father, and his grand- 
father, and his great- and great-great-grandfather pursued 
the business of capturing ships and making their crews 
walk the plank, was no reason why he should be permitted 
to pursue it. Society, we will all agree, ought to say he 
would have to stop piracy and stop it at once, and that 
without getting a cent for stopping. 

Or supposing it had happened that Mr. Kidd had sold 
out his piratical business to Smith, Jones, or Robinson, 
we will all agree that society ought to say that their pur- 
chase of the business gave them no greater right than 
Mr. Kidd had. 

We will all agree that that is what society ought to say. 
Observe, I do not ask what society would say. 

For, ridiculous and preposterous as it may appear, I 
am satisfied that, under the circumstances I have supposed, 
society would not for a long time say what we have 
agreed it ought to say. Not only would all the Kidds 
loudly claim that to make them give up their business 
without full recompense would be a wicked interference 
with vested rights, but the justice of this claim would at 
first be assumed as a matter of course by all or nearly 
all the influential classes — the great lawyers, the able 
journalists, the writers for the magazines, the eloquent 
clergymen, and the principal professors in the principal 
universities. Nay, even the merchants and sailors, when 



THE GREAT-GEEAT-GRANDSON OF CAPTAIN KIDD. 47 

they first began to complain, would be so tyrannized and 
browbeaten by this public opinion that they would hardly 
think of more than of buying out the Kidds, and, wher- 
ever here and there any one dared to raise his voice in 
favor of stopping piracy at once and without compensa- 
tion, he would only do so under penalty of being stigma- 
tized as a reckless disturber and wicked foe of social 
order. 

If any one denies this, if any one says mankind are not 
such fools, then I appeal to universal history to bear me 
witness. I appeal to the facts of to-day. 

Show me a wrong, no matter how monstrous, that ever 
yet, among any people, became ingrafted in the social 
system, and I will prove to you the truth of what I say. 

The majority of men do not think ; the majority of men 
have to expend so much energy in the struggle to make 
a living that they do not have time to think. The majority 
of men accept, as a matter of course, whatever is. This 
is what makes the task of the social reformer so difficult, 
his path so hard. This is what brings upon those who 
first raise their voices in behalf of a great truth the sneers 
of the powerful and the curses of the rabble, ostracism 
and martjrrdom, the robe of derision and the crown of 
thorns. 

Am I not right ? Have there not been states of society 
in which piracy has been considered the most respectable 
and honorable of pursuits ? Did the Roman populace see 
anything more reprehensible in a gladiatorial show than 
we do in a horse-race ? Does public opinion in Dahomey 
see anything reprehensible in the custom of sacrificing a 
thousand or two human beings by way of signalizing 
grand occasions ? Are there not states of society in which, 
in spite of the natural proportions of the sexes, polygamy 
is considered a matter of course ? Are there not states of 
society in which it would be considered the most ridiculous 



48 THE LAND QUESTION. 

thing in the world to say that a man^s son was more closely 
related to him than his nephew? Are there not states 
of society in which it would be considered disreputable 
for a man to carry a burden while a woman who could 
stagger under it was around?— states of society in which 
the husband who did not occasionally beat his wife would 
be deemed by both sexes a weak-minded, low-spirited 
fellow ? What would Chinese fashionable society consider 
more outrageous than to be told that mothers should not 
be permitted to squeeze their daughters' feet, or Flathead 
women than being restrained from tying a board on their 
infants' skulls ? How long has it been since the monstrous 
doctrine of the divine right of kings was taught through 
all Christendom ? 

What is the slave-trade but piracy of the worst kind ? 
Yet it is not long since the slave-trade was looked upon 
as a perfectly respectable business, affording as legitimate 
an opening for the investment of capital and the display 
of enterprise as any other. The proposition to prohibit 
it was first looked upon as ridiculous, then as fanatical, 
then as wicked. It was only slowly and by hard fighting 
that the truth in regard to it gained ground. Does not 
our very Constitution bear witness to what I say ? Does 
not the fundamental law of the nation, adopted twelve 
years after the enunciation of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, declare that for twenty years the slave-trade 
shall not be prohibited nor restricted? Such dominion 
had the idea of vested interests over the minds of those 
who had already proclaimed the inalienable right of man 
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ! 

Is it not but yesterday that in the freest and greatest 
republic on earth, among the people who boast that they 
lead the very van of civilization, this doctrine of vested 
rights was deemed a sufficient justification for all the 
cruel wrongs of human slavery ? Is it not but yesterday 



THE aREAT-GEEAT-GRANDSON OF CAPTAIN KIDD. 49 

when whoever dared to say that the rights of property did 
not justly attach to human beings ; when whoever dared 
to deny that human beings could be rightfully bought 
and sold like cattle— the husband torn from the wife and 
the child from the mother; when whoever denied the 
right of whoever had paid his money for him to work or 
whip his own nigger was looked upon as a wicked assailant 
of the rights of property ? Is it not but yesterday when 
in the South whoever whisperei such a thought took his 
life in his hands; when in ihe North the abolitionist 
was held by the churches as worse than an infidel, was 
denounced by the politicians and rotten-egged by the mob ? 
I was born in a Northern State, I have never lived in the 
South, I am not yet gray ; but I well remember, as every 
American of middle age must remember, how over and 
over again I have heard all questionings of slavery silenced 
by the declaration that the negroes were the property of 
their masters, and that to take away a man's slave without 
payment was as much a crime as to take away his horse 
without payment. And whoever does not remember that 
far back, let him look over American literature previous 
to the war, and say whether, if the business of piracy had 
been afloui'ishing business, it would have lacked defenders ? 
Let him say whether any proposal to stop the business of 
piracy without compensating the pirates would not have 
been denounced at first as a proposal to set aside vested 
rights ? 

But I am appealing to other states of society and to 
times that are past merely to get my readers, if I can, out 
of their accustomed ruts of thought. The proof of what 
I assert about the Kidds and their business is in the 
thought and speech of to-day. 

Here is a system which robs the producers of wealth as 
remorselessly and far more regularly and systematically 
than the pirate robs the merchantman. Here is a system 



50 THE LAND QUESTION. 

that steadily condemns thousands to far more lingering 
and horrible deaths than that of walking the plank— to 
death of the mind and death of the soul, as well as death of 
the body. These things are undisputed. No one denies 
that Irish pauperism and famine are the direct results of 
this land system, and no one who will examine the subject 
will deny that the chronic pauperism and chronic famine 
which everywhere mark our civilization are the results 
of this system. Yet we are told— nay, it seems to be 
taken for granted— that this system cannot be abolished 
without buying off those who profit by it. "Was there 
ever more degrading abasement of the human mind before 
a fetish ? Can we wonder, as we see it, at any perversion 
of ideas ? 

Consider : is not the parallel I have drawn a true one ? 
Is it not just as much a perversion of ideas to apply the 
doctrine of vested rights to property in land, when these 
are its admitted fruits, as it was to apply it to property 
in human flesh and blood ; as it would be to apply it to 
the business of piracy? In what does the claim of the 
Irish landholders differ from that of the hereditary pirate 
or the man who has bought out a piratical business? 
"Because I have inherited or purchased the business of 
robbing merchantmen," says the pirate, *' therefore respect 
for the rights of property mu t compel you to let me go 
on robbing ships and making sailors walk the plank until 
you buy me out." " Because we have inherited or pur- 
chased the privilege of appropriating to ourselves the 
lion's share of the produce of labor," says the landlord, 
" therefore you must continue to let us do it, even though 
poor wretches shiver with cold and faint with hunger, 
even though, in their poverty and misery, they are reduced 
to waUow with the pigs." What is the difference ? 

This is the point I want to make clearly and distinctly, 
for it shows a distinction that in current thought is over- 



THE GEEAT-GREAT-GEANDSON OF CAPTAIN KIDD. 51 

looked. Property in land, like property in slaves, is 
essentially different from property in things that are the 
result of labor. Rob a man or a people of money, or 
goods, or cattle, and the robbery is finished there and 
then. The lapse of time does not, indeed, change wrong 
into right, but it obliterates the effects of the deed. That 
is done ; it is over j and, unless it be very soon righted, it 
glides away into the past, with the men who were parties 
to it, so swiftly that nothing save omniscience can trace 
its effects 5 and in attempting to right it we would be in 
danger of doing fresh wrong. The past is forever beyond 
us. We can neither punish nor recompense the dead. 
But rob a people of the land on which they must Hve, 
and the robbery is continuous. It is a fresh robbery of 
every succeeding generation — a new robbery every year 
and every day ; it is like the robbery which condemns to 
slavery the children of the slave. To apply to it the 
statute of limitations, to acknowledge for it the title of 
prescription, is not to condone the past ; it is to legalize 
robbery in the present, to justify it in the future. The 
indictment which really lies against the Irish landlords is 
not that their ancestors, or the ancestors of their grantors, 
robbed the ancestors of the Irish people. That makes no 
difference. "Let the dead bury their dead." The indict- 
ment that truly lies is that here, now, in the year 1881, 
they rob the Irish people. And shall we be told that 
there can be a vested right to continue such robbery ? 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ONLY WAY, THE EASY WAY. 

I HAVE dwelt so long upon this question of compen- 
sating landowners, not merely because it is of great 
practical importance, but because its discussion brings 
clearly into view the principles upon which the land 
question, in any country, can alone be justly and finally 
settled. In the light of these principles we see that land- 
owners have no rightful claim either to the land or to 
compensation for its resumption by the people, and, 
further than that, we see that no such rightful claim can 
ever be created. It would be wrong to pay the present 
landowners for " their " land at the expense of the people ; 
it would likewise be wrong to sell it again to smaller 
holders. It would be wrong to abolish the payment of 
rent, and to give the land to its present cultivators. In 
the very nature of things, land cannot rightfully be made 
individual property. This principle is absolute. The 
title of a peasant proprietor deserves no more respect 
than the title of a great territorial noble. No sovereign 
political power, no compact or agreement, even though 
consented to by the whole population of the globe, can 
give to an individual a valid title to the exclusive owner- 
ship of a square inch of soil. The earth is an entailed 
estate— entailed upon all the generations of the children 
of men, by a deed written in the constitution of Nature, 
a deed that no human proceedings can bar, and no pre- 



THE ONLY WAY, THE EASY WAY. 53 

scription determine. Each succeeding generation has but 
a tenancy for life. Admitting that any set of men may 
barter away their own natural rights (and this logically 
involves an admission of the right of suicide), they can 
no more barter away the rights of their successors than 
they can barter away the rights of the inhabitants of 
other worlds. 

What should be aimed at in the settlement of the Irish 
Land Question is thus very clear. The "three F's" are, 
what they have already been called, three frauds ; and the 
proposition to create peasant proprietorship is no better. 
It will not do merely to carve out of the estates of the 
landlords minor estates for the tenants; it will not do 
merely to substitute a larger for a smaller class of pro- 
prietors ; it will not do to confine the settlement to agri- 
cultural land, leaving to its present possessors the land of 
the towns and villages. None of these lame and impotent 
conclusions will satisfy the demands of justice or cure the 
bitter evils now so apparent. The only true and just 
solution of the problem, the only end worth aiming at, is 
to make all the land the common property of all the 
people. 

This principle conceded, the question of method arises. 
How shall this be done ? Nothing is easier. It is merely 
necessary to divert the rent which now flows into the 
pockets of the landlords into the common treasury of the 
whole people. It is not possible so to divide up the land 
of Ireland as to give each family, still less each individual, 
an equal share. And, even if that were possible, it would 
not be possible to maintain equality, for old people are 
constantly dying and new people constantly being born, 
while the relative value of land is constantly changing. 
But it is possible to divide the rent equally, or, what 
amounts to the same thing, to apply it to purposes of 
common benefit. This is the way, and this is the only 



54 THE LAND QUESTION. 

way, in wMcli absolute justice can be done. This is tbe 
way, and this is the only way, in which the equal right of 
every man, woman, and child can be acknowledged and 
secured. As Herbert Spencer says of it : * 

Such a doctrine is consistent witli the highest state of civilization ; 
may be carried out without involving a community of goods, and 
need cause no very serious revolution in existing arrangements. The 
change required would simply be a change of landlords. Separate 
ownership would merge into the joint-stock ownership of the public. 
Instead of being in the possession of individuals, the country would 
be held by the great corporate body— society. Instead of leasing his 
acres from an isolated proprietor, the farmer would lease them from 
the nation. Instead of paying his rent to the agent of Sir John or 
his Grace, he would pay it to an agent or deputy agent of the com- 
munity. Stewards would be public ofdcials instead of private ones, 
and tenancy the only land tenure. A state of things so ordered 
would be in perfect harmony with the moral law. Under it, all men 
would be equally landlords ; all men would be alike free to become 
tenants. . . . Clearly, therefore, on such a system, the earth might 
be inclosed, occupied, and cultivated, in entire subordination to the 
law of equal freedom. 

Now, it is a very easy thing thus to sweep away all 
private ownership of land, and convert all occupiers into 
tenants of the State, by appropriating rent. No compli- 
cated laws or cumbersome machinery is necessary. It 
is necessary only to tax land up to its full value. Do 
that, and without any talk about dispossessing landlords, 
without any use of the ugly word ^' confiscation," without 
any infringement of the just rights of property, the land 
would become virtually the people's, while the landlords 
would be left the absolute and unqualified possessors of 
— their deeds of title and conveyance ! They could con- 
tinue to call themselves landlords, if they wished to, just 
as that poor old Bourbon, the Comte de Chambord, con- 
tinues to call himself King of France ; but, as what, under 

* "Social Statics/' Chapter IX., sec. 8. 



THE ONLY WAY, THE EASY WAY. 55 

this system, was paid by tlie tenant would be taken by 
the State, it is pretty clear that middlemen would not 
long survive, and that very soon the occupiers of land 
would come to be nominally the owners, though, in reality, 
they would be the tenants of the whole people. 

How beautifully this simple method would satisfy 
every economic requirement; how, freeing labor and 
capital from the fetters that now oppress them (for all 
other taxes could be easily remitted), it would enormously 
increase the production of wealth; how it would make 
distribution conform to the law of justice, dr}^ up the 
springs of want and misery, elevate society from its lowest 
stratum, and give all their fair share in the blessings of 
advancing civilization, can perhaps be fully shown only 
by such a detailed examination of the whole social problem 
as I have made in a book * which I hope will be read by 
all the readers of this, since in it I go over much ground 
and treat many subjects which cannot be even touched 
upon here. Nevertheless, any one can see that to tax 
land up to its full rental value would amount to precisely 
the same thing as formally to take possession of it, and 
then let it out to the highest bidders. 

* ^'Progress and Poverty." 



CHAPTER IX. 

PRINCIPLE THE BEST POLICY. 

WE have now seen the point that should be aimed 
at, and the method by which it is to be reached. 
There is another branch of the subject which practical 
men must consider : the political forces that may be mar- 
shaled; the political resistance that must be overcome. 
It is one thing to work out such a problem in the closet— 
to demonstrate its proper solution to the satisfaction of a 
few intelligent readers. It is another thing to solve it 
in the field of action, where ignorance, prejudice, and 
powerful interests must be met. 

It cannot be that the really earnest men in the Irish 
movement are satisfied with any program yet put forth. 
But they are doubtless influenced by the fear that the 
avowal of radical views and aims would not merely 
intensify present opposition, but frighten away from 
their cause large numbers and important influences now 
with it. To say nothing of English conservatism, there 
is in Ireland a large class now supporting the movement 
who are morbidly afraid of anything which savors of 
" communism " or " socialism," while in the United States, 
whence much moral support and pecuniary aid have been 
derived, it is certain that many of those who are now 
loudest in their expressions of sympathy would slink away 
from a movement which avowed the intention of abolish- 
ing private property in land. A resolution expressive of 



PEINCIPLE THE BEST POLICY. .57 

sympathy with the Irish people in their " struggle for the 
repeal of oppressive land laws" was, by a unanimous 
vote of the National House of Representatives, flung full 
in the face of the British lion. How many votes would 
that resolution have got had it involved a declaration of 
hostility to the institution of individual property in land ? 

I understand all this. Nevertheless, I am convinced 
that the Irish land movement would gain, not lose, were 
its earnest leaders, disdaining timid counsels, boldly to 
avow the principle that the land of Ireland belongs of 
right to the whole people of Ireland, and, without bothering 
about compensation to the landholders, to propose its 
resumption by the people in the simple way I have sug- 
gested. That, in doing this, they would lose strength 
and increase antagonism in some directions is true, but 
they would in other directions gain strength and allay 
antagonisms. And, while the loss would constantly tend 
to diminish, the gain would constantly tend to increase. 
They would, to use the phrase of Emerson, have ^' hitched 
their wagon to a star." 

I admit, as will be urged by those who would hold back 
from such an avowal as I propose, that political progress 
must be by short steps rather than by great leaps ; that 
those who would have the people foUow them readily, 
and especially those who would enjoy a present popularity 
and preferment, must not go too far in advance ; and that 
to demand a little at first is often the surest way to obtain 
much at last. 

So far as personal consideration is concerned, it is only 
to earnest men capable of feeling the inspiration of a 
great principle that I care to talk, or that I can hope to 
convince. To them I wish to point out that caution is 
not wisdom when it involves the ignoring of a great 
principle ; that it is not every step that involves progres- 
sion, but only such steps as are in the right line and 



58 THE LAND QUESTION. 

make easier the next j that there are strong forces that 
wait but the raising of the true standard to rally on its 
side. 

Let the time-servers, the demagogues, the compromisers, 
to whom nothing is right and nothing is wrong, but who 
are always seeking to find some half-way house between 
right and wrong— let them aU go their ways. Any cause 
which can lay hold of a great truth is the stronger with- 
out them. If the earnest men among the Irish leaders 
abandon their present half-hearted, illogical position, and 
take their stand frankly and firmly upon the principle 
that the youngest child of the poorest peasant has as 
good a right to tread the soil and breathe the air of 
Ireland as the eldest son of the proudest duke, they will 
have put their fight on the right line. Present defeat will 
but pave the way for future victory, and each step won 
makes easier the next. Their position will be not only 
logically defensible, but will prove the stronger the more 
it is discussed; for private property in land— which 
never arises from the natural perceptions of men, but 
springs historically from usurpation and robbery — is 
something so utterly absurd, so outrageously unjust, so 
clearly a waste of productive forces and a barrier to the 
most profitable use of natural opportunities, so thoroughly 
opposed to all sound maxims of public policy, so glaringly 
in the way of further progress, that it is only tolerated 
because the majority of men never think about it or hear 
it questioned. Once fairly arraign it, and it must be 
condemned; once call upon its advocates to exhibit its 
claims, and their cause is lost in advance. There is to-day 
no political economist of standing who dare hazard his 
reputation by defending it on economic grounds ; there is 
to-day no thinker of eminence who either does not, like 
Herbert Spencer, openly declare the injustice of private 
property in land, or tacitly make the same admission. 



PRINCIPLE THE BEST POLICY. 59 

Once force the discussion on this line, and the Irish 
reformers will compel to their side the most active and 
powerful of the men who mold thought. 

And they will not merely close up their own ranks, 
now in danger of being broken; they will "carry the 
war into Africa," and make possible the most powerful of 
political combinations. 

It is already beginning to be perceived that the Irish 
movement, so far as it has yet gone, is merely in the 
interest of a class ; that, so far as it has yet voiced any 
demand, it promises nothing to the laboring and artisan 
classes. Its opponents already see this opportunity for 
division, which, even without their efforts, must soon 
show itseK, and which, now that the first impulse of the 
movement is over, will the more readily develop. To 
close up its ranks, and hold them firm, so that, even 
though they be forced to bend, they will not break and 
scatter, it must cease to be a movement looking merely 
to the benefit of the tenant-farmer, and become a move- 
ment for the benefit of the whole laboring-class. 

And the moment this is done the Irish land agitation 
assumes a new and a grander phase. It ceases to be an 
Irish movement ; it becomes but the van of a world-wide 
struggle. Count the loss and the gain. 



CHAPTER X. 

APPEALS TO ANIMOSITY. 

THE Land League movement, as an Irish movement, 
has in its favor the strength of Irish national feeling. 
In assuming the radical ground I urge, it would lose some 
of this 5 for there are doubtless a considerable number of 
Irishmen on both sides of the Atlantic who would shrink 
at first from the proposal to abohsh private property in 
land. But all that is worth having would soon come back 
to it. And its strength would be more compact and in- 
tense—animated by a more definite purpose and a more 
profound conviction. 

But in ceasing to be a movement having relation simply 
to Ireland— in proclaiming a truth and proposing a remedy 
which apply as well to every other country— it would 
allay opposition, which, as a mere local movement, it 
arouses, and bring to its support powerful forces. 

The powerful landed interest of England is against the 
movement anyhow. The natural allies of the Irish agita- 
tors are the English working-classes— not merely the 
Irishmen and sons of Irishmen who, in the larger English 
cities, are numerous enough to make some show and exert 
some voting power, without being numerous enough to 
effect any important result— but the great laboring masses 
of Great Britain. So long as merely Irish measures are 
proposed, they cannot gain the hearty support even of 
the English radicals; so long as race prejudices and 



APPEALS TO ANIMOSITY. 61 

hatreds are appealed to, counter-prejudices and -hatreds 
must be aroused. 

It is the very madness of folly, it is one of those pohtical 
blunders worse than crimes, to permit in this land agita- 
tion that indiscriminating denunciation of England and 
everything English which is so common at Land League 
meetings and in the newspapers which voice Irish senti- 
ment. The men who do this may be giving way to a 
natural sentiment; but they are most effectually doing 
the work of the real oppressors of Ireland. Were they 
secret emissaries of the London police, were they bribed 
with the gold which the British oligarchy grinds out of 
the toil of its white slaves in mill and mine and field, 
they could not better be doing its work. " Divide and 
conquer " is the golden maxim of the oppressors of man- 
kind. It is by arousing race antipathies and exciting 
national animosities, by appeahng to local prejudices and 
setting people against people, that aristocracies and 
despotisms have been founded and maintained. They 
who would free men must rise above such feelings if 
they would be successful. The greatest enemy of the 
people's cause is he who appeals to national passion and 
excites old hatreds. He is its best friend who does his 
utmost to bury them out of sight. For that action and 
reaction are equal and uniform is the law of the moral as 
of the physical world. Herein lies the far-reaching sweep 
of those sublime teachings that, after centuries of nominal 
acceptance, the so-called Christian world yet ignores, and 
which call on us to answer not revilings with revilings, 
but to meet hatred with love. '^ For," as say the Scrip- 
tures of the Buddhists, ^' hatred never ceases by hatred at 
any time; hatred ceases by love; that is an old rule." 
To undiscriminately denounce Englishmen is simply to 
arouse prejudices and excite animosities— to separate 
force that sought to be united. To make this the fight 



62 THE LAND QUESTION. 

of the Irish people against the English people is to doom 
it to failure. To make it the common cause of the people 
everywhere against a system which everywhere oppresses 
and robs them is to make its success assured. Had this 
been made to appear, the Irish members would not have 
stood alone when it came to the final resistance to coercion. 
Had this been made to appear, Great Britain would be in 
a ferment at the proposal to give the government despotic 
powers. If the Irish leaders are wise, they may yet avail 
themselves of the rising tide of British democracy. Let 
the Land Leaguers adopt the noble maxim of the German 
Social Democrats. Let them be Land Leaguers first, and 
Irishmen afterward. Let them account him an enemy of 
their cause who seeks to pander to prejudice and arouse 
hate. Let them arouse to a higher love than the mere 
love of country J to a wider patriotism than that which 
exhausts itself on one little sub-division of the human 
race, one little spot on the great earth's surface j and in 
this name, and by this sign, caU upon their brothers, not 
so much to aid them, as to strike for themselves. 

The Irish people have the same inalienable right to 
govern themselves as have every other people; but the 
full recognition of this right need not necessarily involve 
separation, and to talk of separation first is to arouse pas- 
sions that will be utilized by the worst enemies of Ireland. 
The demand for the full political rights of the Irish people 
wiU be the stronger if it be made to line with and include 
the demand for the full political rights of the unenfran- 
chised British people. And it must be remembered that 
all the tendencies of the time are not to separation, but 
to integration; not to independence, but to interdepen- 
dence. This is observable wherever modern influences 
reach, and in all things. To attempt to resist it is to 
attempt to turn back the tide of progress. 



APPEALS TO ANIMOSITY. 63 

It is not with the English people that the Irish people 
have cause of quarrel. It is with the system that op- 
presses both. That is the thing to denounce ; that is the 
thing to fight. And it is to be fought most effectually by 
uniting the masses against it. Monarchy, aristocracy, 
landlordism, would get but a new lease of life by the 
arousing of sectional passions. The greatest blow that 
could be struck against them would be, scrupulously 
avoiding everything that could excite antagonistic popular 
feeling, to carry this land agitation into Great Britain, 
not as a mere Irish question, but as a home question as 
well. To proclaim the universal truth that land is of 
natural right common property; to abandon all timid 
and haK-way schemes which attempt to compromise 
between justice and injustice, and to demand nothing 
more nor less than a full recognition of this natural right 
would be to do this. It would inevitably be to put the 
British masses upon inquiry ; to put British landholders 
upon the defensive, and give them more than enough to 
do at home. Both England and Scotland are ripe for such 
an agitation, and, once fairly begun, it can have but one 
result— the victory of the popular cause. 



CHAPTEE XI. 

HOW TO WIN. 

NO^ is it merely tlie laboring-classes of Great Britain 
who may thus be brought into the fight, if the true 
standard be raised. To demand the nationalization of 
land by the simple means I have proposed makes possible 
— nay, as the discussion goes on, makes inevitable — an 
irresistible combination, the combination of labor and 
capital against landlordism. This combination proved 
its power by winning the battle of free trade in 1846 
against the most determined resistance of the landed 
interest. It would be much more powerful now, and, if 
it can again be made on the land question, it can again 
force the intrenchments of the landed aristocracy. 

This combination cannot be made on any of the timid, 
illogical schemes as yet proposed ; but it can be made on 
the broad principle that land is rightfully common prop- 
erty. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is yet true that, 
while the present position of the Irish agitators does 
involve a menace to capital, the absolute denial of the 
right of private property in land would not. 

In admitting that the landlords ought to get any rent 
at all, in admitting that, if the land is taken from them, 
they must be paid for it, the Irish agitators give away 
their whole case. For in this they admit that the land 
really belongs to the landlords, and put property in land 
in the same category with other property. Thus they 



HOW TO WIN. 65 

place themselves in an indefensible position; thus they 
give to the agitation a "communistic"* character, and 
excite against it that natural and proper feeling which 
strongly resents any attack upon the rights of property 
as an attack upon the very foundations of society. It 
was doubtless this mistake of the agitators in admitting 
the right of private property in land to which Archbishop 
McCabe recently alluded in saying that some of the utter- 
ances of the agitators excited the solicitude of the Holy 
See. For this mistake gives to the agitation the char- 
acter of an attack upon the rights of property. If the 
land is really the property of the landlords (and this is 
admitted when it is admitted that they are entitled to 
any rent or to any compensation), then to limit the rent 
which they shall get, or to interfere with their freedom 
to make what terms they please with tenants, is an attack 
upon property rights. If the land is rightfully the land- 
lords', then is any compulsion as to how they shall let it, 
or on what terms they shall part with it, a bad and dan- 
gerous precedent, which naturally alarms capital and 
excites the solicitude of those who are concerned for good 
morals and social order. For, if a man may be made to 
part with one species of property by boycotting or agita- 
tion, why not with another ? If a man's title to land is 
as rightful as his title to his watch, what is the difference 
between agitation by Land League meetings and Parlia- 
mentary filibustering to make him give up the one and 
agitation with a cocked pistol to make him give up the 
other? 

But, if it be denied that land justly is,* or can be, private 
property, if the equal rights of the whole people to the use of 
the elements gratuitously furnished by Nature be asserted 

* I use the word in the usual sense in which it is used by the 
vulgar, and in which a communist is understood as one who wants 
to divide up other people's property. 



66 THE LAND QUESTION.- 

without drawback or compromise, then the essential dif- 
ference between property in land and property in things 
of human production is at once brought out. Then will 
it clearly appear not only that the denial of the right of 
individual property in land does not involve any menace 
to legitimate property rights, but that the maintenance of 
private property in land necessarily involves a denial of 
the right to aU other property, and that the recognition 
of the claims of the landlords means a continuous robbery 
of capital as well as of labor. 

All this will appear more and more clearly as the prac- 
tical measures necessary to make land common property 
are proposed and discussed. These simple measures 
involve no harsh proceedings, no forcible dispossession, 
no shock to public confidence, no retrogression to a lower 
industrial organization, no loaning of public money, or 
establishment of cumbrous commissions. Instead of 
doing violence to the rightful sense of property, they 
assert and vindicate it. The way to make land common 
property is simply to take rent for the common benefit. 
And to do this, the easy way is to abolish one tax after 
another, until the whole weight of taxation falls upon 
the value of land. When that point is reached, the battle 
is won. The hare is caught, killed, and skinned, and to 
cook him will be a very easy matter. The real fight will 
come on the proposition to consolidate existing taxation 
upon land values. When that is once won, the landholders 
will not merely have been decisively defeated, they will 
have been routed ; and the nature of land values will be 
so generally understood that to raise taxation so as to 
take the whole rent for common purposes will be a mere 
matter of course. 

The political art is like the military art. It consists in 
combining the greatest strength against the point of least 
resistance. I have pointed out the way in which, in the 



HOW TO WIN. 67 

case we are considering, this can be done. And, the more 
the matter is considered, the clearer and clearer will it 
appear that there is every practical reason, as there is 
every theoretical reason, why the Irish reformers should 
take this vantage-ground of principle. To propose to put 
the public burdens upon the landholders is not a novel 
and unheard-of thing against which English prejudice 
would run as something " newfangled," some new inven- 
tion of modern socialism. On the contrary, it is the 
ancient English practice. It would be but a return, in a 
form adapted to modern times, to the system under which 
English land was originally parceled out to the predeces- 
sors of the present holders— the just system, recognized 
for centuries, that those who enjoy the common property 
should bear the common burdens. The putting of prop- 
erty in land in the same category as property in things 
produced by labor is comparatively modern. In England, 
as in Ireland and Scotland, as in fact among every peo- 
ple of whom we know anything, the land was originally 
treated as common property, and this recognition ran all 
through the feudal system. The essence of the feudal 
system was in treating the landholder not as an owner, 
but as a lessee. William the Conqueror did not give 
away the land of England as the Church lands were given 
away by Henry VIII., when he divided among his syco- 
phants the property of the people, which, after the manner 
of the times, had been set apart for the support of reli- 
gious, educational, and charitable institutions. To every 
grant of land made by the Conqueror was annexed a 
condition which amounted to a heavy perpetual tax or 
rent. One of his first acts was to divide the soil of Eng- 
land into sixty thousand knights' fees ; and thus, besides 
many other dues and obligations, was thrown upon the 
landholders the cost of providing and maintaining the 
army. All the long, costly wars that England fought 



68 THE LAND QUESTION. 

during feudal times involved no public debt. Public 
debt, pauperism, and the grinding poverty of the poorer 
classes came in as the landholders gradually shook off 
the obligations on which they had received their land, an 
operation culminating in the abolition after the Restora- 
tion of the feudal tenures, for which were substituted 
indirect taxes that stiU weigh upon the whole people. To 
now reverse this process, to abolish the taxes which are 
borne by labor and capital, and to substitute for them a 
tax on rent, would be not the adoption of anything new, 
but a simple going back to the old plan. In England, as 
in Ireland, the movement would appeal to the popular 
imagination as a demand for the reassertion of ancient 
rights. 

There are other most important respects in which this 
measure will commend itself to the English mind. The 
tax upon land values or rent is in all economic respects 
the most perfect of taxes. No political economist will 
deny that it combines the maximum of certainty with the 
minimum of loss and cost ; that, unlike taxes upon capital 
or exchange or improvement, it does not check production 
or enhance prices or fall ultimately upon the consumer. 
And, in proposing to abolish all other taxes in favor of 
this theoretically perfect tax, the Land Reformers will 
have on their side the advantage of ideas already current, 
while they can bring the argumenfum ad Jiominem to bear 
on those who might never comprehend an abstract prin- 
ciple. Englishmen of all classes have happily been edu- 
cated up to a belief in free trade, though a very large 
amount of revenue is still collected from customs. Let 
the Land Reformers take advantage of this by proposing 
to carry out the doctrine of free trade to its fullest extent. 
If a revenue tariff is better than a protective tariff, then 
no tariff at all is better than a revenue tariff. Let them 
propose to abolish the customs duties entirely, and to 



HOW TO WIN. 69 

abolisli as well harbor dues and lighthouse dues and dock 
charges, and in their place to add to the tax on rent, or 
the value of land exclusive of improvements. Let them 
in the same way propose to get rid of the excise, the 
various license taxes, the tax upon buildings, the onerous 
and unpopular income tax, etc., and to saddle all public 
expenses on the landlords. 

This would bring home the land question to thousands 
and thousands who have never thought of it before ; to 
thousands and thousands who have heretofore looked 
upon the land question as something peculiarly Irish, or 
something that related exclusively to agriculture and to 
farmers, and have never seen how, in various direct and 
indirect ways, they have to contribute to the immense 
sums received by the landlords as rent. It would be 
putting the argument in a shape in which even the most 
stupid could understand it. It would be directing the 
appeal to a spot where even the unimaginative are sensi- 
tive—the pocket. How long would a merchant or banker 
or manufacturer or annuitant regard as dangerous and 
wicked an agitation which proposed to take taxation off 
of him? Even the most prejudiced can be relied on to 
listen with patience to an argument in favor of making 
some one else pay what they now are paying. 

Let me illustrate by a little story what I feel confident 
would be the effect of the policy I propose : 

Once upon a time I was the Pacific-coast agent of an 
Eastern news association, which took advantage of an 
opposition telegraph company to run against the Asso- 
ciated Press monopoly. The association in California 
consisted of one strong San Francisco paper, to which 
telegraphic news was of much importance, and a number 
of interior papers, to which it was of minor importance, 
if of any importance at all. It became necessary to raise 
more money for the expenses of collecting and transmit 



70 THE LAND QUESTION. 

ting these despatches, and, thinking it only fair, I assessed 
the increased cost to the strong metropolitan paper. The 
proprietor of this paper was very indignant. He appealed 
to the proprietors of all the other papers, and they all 
joined in his protest. I replied by calling a meeting. At 
this meeting the proprietor of the San Francisco paper 
led off with an indignant speech. He was seconded by 
several others, and evidently had the sympathy of the 
whole crowd. Then came my turn. I said, in effect: 
"Gentlemen, you can do what you please about this 
matter. Whatever satisfies you satisfies me. The only 
thing fixed is, that more money has to be raised. As this 
San Francisco paper pays now a much lower relative rate 
than you do, I thought it only fair that it should pay the 
increased cost. But, if you think otherwise, there is no 
reason in the world why you should not pay it yourselves." 
The debate immediately took another turn, and in a few 
minutes my action was indorsed by a unanimous vote, for 
the San Francisco man was so disgusted by the way his 
supporters left him that he would not vote at all. 

Now, that is just about what will happen to the British 
landlords if the question be put in the way I propose. 
The British landowners are in numbers but an insignifi- 
cant minority. And, the more they protested against the 
injustice of having to pay all the taxes, the quicker would 
the public mind realize the essential injustice of private 
property in land, the quicker would the majority of the 
people come to see that the landowners ought not only to 
pay all the taxes, but a good deal more besides. Once 
put the question in such a way that the British working- 
man will realize that he pays two prices for his ale and 
half a dozen prices for his tobacco, because a landowners* 
Parliament in the time of Charles II. shook off their ancient 
dues to the State, and imposed them in indirect taxation 
on himj once bring to the attention of the well-to-do 



HOW TO WIN. 71 

Englisliman^ who grunts as lie pays his income tax, the 
question as to whether the landowner, who draws his 
income from property that of natural right belongs to the 
whole people, ought not to pay it instead of him, and it 
will not be long before the absurd injustice of allowing 
rent to be appropriated by individuals will be thoroughly 
understood. This is a very different thing from asking 
the British taxpayer to buy out the Irish landlord for 
the sake of the Irish peasant. 

I have been speaking as though all landholders would 
resist the change which would sacrifice their special 
interests to the larger interests of society. But I am 
satisfied that to think this is to do landholders a great 
injustice. For landholders as a class are not more stupid 
nor more selfish than any other class. And as they saw, 
as they must see, as the discussion progresses, that they 
also would be the gainers in the great social change 
which would aboHsh poverty and elevate the very lowest 
classes— the ^' mudsills " of society, as a Southern Senator 
expressively called them during the Slavery discussion- 
above the want, the misery, the vice, and degradation in 
which they are now plunged, there are many landowners 
who would join heartily and unreservedly in the effort to 
bring this change about. This I believe, not merely 
because my reading and observation both teach me that 
low, narrow views of self-interest are not the strongest 
of human motives, but because I know that to-day among 
those who see the truth I have here tried to set forth, and 
who would carry out the reform I have proposed, are 
many landholders.* .And, if they be earnest men, I appeal 

* Among the warm friends my book " Progress and Poverty '^ has 
found are many landholders— some of them large landholders. As 
types I may mention the names of D. A. Learnard, of San Joaquin, 
a considerable farmer, who had no sooner read it than he sent for a 
dozeii copies to circulate among his neighbors j Hiram Tubbs, of 



72 THE LAND QUESTION. 

to landholders as confidently as to any other class. There 
is that in a great truth that can raise a human soul above 
the mists of selfishness. 

The course which I suggest is the only course which 
can be logically based on principle. It has everything to 
commend it. It will concentrate the greatest strength 
against the least resistance. And it will be on the right 
line. Every step gained will be an advance toward the 
ultimate goal; every step gained will make easier the 
next. 

San Francisco, the owner of mucli valuaMe real estate in and near 
that city ; and Sir George Grey, of New Zealand, the owner of a good 
deal of land in that colony, of which he was formerly governor, as 
well as, I understand, of valuable estates in England. 



CHAPTER XII. 

IN THE UNITED STATES. 

IN speaking with special reference to the ease of Ireland^ 
I have, so far as general principles are concerned, been 
using it as a stalking-horse. In discussing the Irish Land 
Question, we really discuss the most vital of American 
questions. And if we of the United States cannot see the 
beam in our own eye, save by looking at the mote in our 
brother's, then let us look at the mote 5 and let us take 
counsel together how he may get it out. For, at least, 
we shall in this way learn how we may deal with our own 
case when we wake up to the consciousness of it. 

And never had the parable of the mote and the beam 
a better illustration than in the attitude of so many 
Americans toward this Irish Land Question. We denounce 
the Irish land system ! We express our sympathy with 
Ireland! We tender our advice by Congressional and 
legislative resolution to our British brethren across the 
sea ! Truly our indignation is cheap and our sjrmpathy 
is cheap, and our advice is very, very cheap ! For what 
are we doing ? Extending over new soil the very institu- 
tion that to them descended from a ruder and a darker 
time. With what conscience can we lecture them ? With 
aU power in the hands of the people, with institutions yet 
plastic, with millions of virgin acres yet to settle, it should 
be ours to do more than vent denunciation, and express 
sympathy, and give advice. It should be ours to show 



74 THE LAND QUESTION. 

the way. This we have not done ; this we do not do. 
Out in onr new States may be seen the growth of a 
system of cultivation worse in its social effects than that 
which prevails in Ireland. In Ireland the laborer has 
some sort of a home, and enjoys some of the family affec- 
tions. In these great '^wheat-manufacturing" districts 
the laborer is a nomad, his home is in his blankets, which 
he carries around with him. The soil bears wheat, crop 
after crop, till its fertility is gone. It does not bear chil- 
dren. These machine- worked ''grain factories" of the 
great Republic of the New World are doing just what 
was done by the slave-worked latifundia of the Roman 
world. Here they prevent, where there they destroyed, 
" the crop of men." And in our large cities may we not 
see misery of the same kind as exists in Ireland ? If it is 
less in amount, is it not merely because our country is 
yet newer; because we have yet a wide territory and a 
sparse population— conditions past which our progress is 
rapidly carrying us ? As for evictions, is it an unheard- 
of thing, even in New York, for families to be turned out 
of their homes because they cannot pay the rent? Are 
there not many acres in this country from which those 
who made homes have been driven by sheriffs' posses, and 
even by troops ? Do not a number of the Mussell Slough 
settlers lie in Santa Clara jail to-day because a great rail- 
road corporation set its envious eyes on soil which they 
had turned from desert into garden, and they in their 
madness tried to resist ejectment ? 

And the men on the other side of the Atlantic who 
vainly imagine that they may settle the great question 
now pressing upon them by free trade in land, or tenant- 
right, or some mild device for establishing a peasant 
proprietary— they may learn something about their own 
case if they will turn their eyes to us. 



IN THE UNITED STATES. 75 

We have had free trade in land 5 we have had in our 
American farmer, owning his own acres, using his own 
capital, and working with his own hands, something far 
better than peasant proprietorship. We have had, what 
no legislation can give the people of Great Britain, vast 
areas of virgin soil. We have had all of these under 
democratic institutions. Yet we have here social disease 
of precisely the same kind as that which exists in Ireland 
and England. And the reason is that we have had here 
precisely the same cause —that we have made land private 
property. So long as this exists, our democratic institu- 
tions are vain, our pretense of equality but cruel irony, 
our public schools can but sow the seeds of discontent. 
So long as this exists, material progress can but force the 
masses of our people into a harder and more hopeless 
slavery. Until we in some way make the land, what 
Nature intended it to be, common property, until we in 
some way secure to every child born among us his natural 
birthright, we have not established the Republic in any 
sense worthy of the name, and we cannot establish the 
Republic. Its foundations are quicksand. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

A LITTLE ISLAND OR A LITTLE WORLD. 

IMAGINE an island girt with ocean; imagine a little 
world swimming in space. Put on it, in imagination, 
human beings. Let them divide the land, share and share 
ahke, as individual property. At first, while population 
is sparse and industrial processes rude and primitive, this 
will work well enough. 

Turn away the eyes of the mind for a moment, let time 
pass, and look again. Some families will have died out, 
some have greatly multiplied; on the whole, population 
will have largely increased, and even supposing there have 
been no important inventions or improvements in the 
productive arts, the increase in population, by causing the 
division of labor, will have made industry more complex. 
During this time some of these people will have been 
careless, generous, improvident; some will have been 
thrifty and grasping. Some of them will have devoted 
much of their powers to thinking of how they themselves 
and the things they see around them came to be, to 
inquiries and speculations as to what there is in the uni- 
verse beyond their little island or their little world, to 
making poems, painting pictures, or writing books; to 
noting the differences in rocks and trees and shrubs and 
grasses; to classifying beasts and birds and fishes and 
insects— to the doing, in short, of all the many things 
which add so largely to the sum of human knowledge 



A LITTLE ISLAND OE A LITTLE WORLD. 77 

and human happiness, without much or any gain of wealth 
to the doer. Others again will have devoted all their 
energies to the extending of their possessions. What, 
then, shall we see, land having been all this time treated 
as private property ? Clearly, we shall see that the primi- 
tive equality has given way to inequality. Some will 
have very much more than one of the original shares into 
which the land was divided ; very many will have no land 
at all. Suppose that, in all things save this, our httle 
island or our little world is Utopia— that there are no wars 
or robberies j that the government is absolutely pure and 
taxes nominal ; suppose, if you want to, any sort of a cur- 
rency ; imagine, if you can imagine such a world or island, 
that interest is utterly abolished; yet inequahty in the 
ownership of land will have produced poverty and virtual 
slavery. 

For the people we have supposed are human beings — 
that is to say, in their physical natures at least, they are 
animals who can live only on land and by the aid of the 
products of land. They may make machines which will 
enable them to float on the sea, or perhaps to fly in the 
air, but to build and equip these machines they must have 
land and the products of land, and must constantly come 
back to land. Therefore those who own the land must 
be the masters of the rest. Thus, if one man has come 
to own all the land, he is their absolute master even to 
life or death. If they can Hve on the land only on his 
terms, then they can live only on his terms, for without 
land they cannot Hve. They are his absolute slaves, and 
so long as his ownership is acknowledged, if they want 
to live, they must do in everything as he wills. 

If, however, the concentration of landownership has 
not gone so far as to make one or a very few men the 
owners of aU the land— if there are still so many land- 
owners that there is competition between them as well as 



78 THE LAND QUESTION. 

between those wlio have only their labor— then the terms 
on which these non-landholders can live will seem more 
like free contract. But it will not be free contract. Land 
can yield no wealth without the application of labor ; labor 
can produce no wealth without land. These are the two 
equally necessary factors of production. Yet, to say that 
they are equally necessary factors of production is not to 
say that, in the making of contracts as to how the results 
of production are divided, the possessors of these two 
meet on equal terms. For the nature of these two factors 
is very different. Land is a natural element ; the human 
being must have his stomach filled every few hours. Land 
can exist without labor, but labor cannot exist without 
land. If I own a piece of land, I can let it lie idle for a 
year or for years, and it will eat nothing. But the laborer 
must eat every day, and his family must eat. And so, in 
the making of terms between them, the landowner has an 
immense advantage over the laborer. It is on the side 
of the laborer that the intense pressure of competition 
comes, for in his case it is competition urged by hunger. 
And, further than this: As population increases, as the 
competition for the use of land becomes more and more 
intense, so are the owners of land enabled to get for the 
use of their land a larger and larger part of the wealth 
which labor exerted upon it produces. That is to say, 
the value of land steadily rises. Now, this steady rise in 
the value of land brings about a confident expectation of 
future increase of value, which produces among land- 
owners all the effects of a combination to hold for higher 
prices. Thus there is a constant tendency to force mere 
laborers to take less and less or to give more and more 
(put it which way you please, it amounts to the same thing) 
of the products of their work for the opportunity to work. 
And thus, in the very nature of things, we should see on 
our little island or our little world that, after a time ha5. 



A LITTLE ISLAND OR A LITTLE WORLD. 79 

passed, some of the people would be able to take and enjoy 
a superabundance of all the fruits of labor without doing 
any labor at all, while others would be forced to work the 
livelong day for a pitiful living. 

But let us introduce another element into the supposi- 
tion. Let us suppose great discoveries and inventions — 
such as the steam-engine, the power-loom, the Bessemer 
process, the reaping-machine, and the thousand and one 
labor-saving devices that are such a marked feature of 
our era. What would be the result ? 

Manifestly, the effect of all such discoveries and inven- 
tions is to increase the power of labor in producing wealth 
—to enable the same amount of wealth to be produced by 
less labor, or a greater amount with the same labor. But 
none of them lessen, or can lessen the necessity for land. 
Untn we can discover some way of making something 
out of nothing — and that is so far beyond our powers as 
to be absolutely unthinkable— there is no possible dis- 
covery or invention which can lessen the dependence of 
labor upon land. And, this being the case, the effect of 
these labor-saving devices, land being the private property 
of some, would simply be to increase the proportion of 
the wealth produced that landowners could demand for 
the use of their land. The ultimate effect of these dis- 
coveries and inventions would be not to benefit the laborer, 
but to make him more dependent. 

And, since we are imagining conditions, imagine labor- 
saving inventions to go to the farthest imaginable point, 
that is to say, to perfection. What then ? Why then, the 
necessity for labor being done away with, all the wealth 
that the land could produce would go entire to the land- 
owners. None of it whatever could be claimed by any 
one else. For the laborers there would be no use at aU. 
If they continued to exist, it would be merely as paupers 
on the bounty of the landowners ! 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS POSSIBLE. 

IN the effects upon the distribution of wealth, of making 
land private property, we may thus see an explanation 
of that paradox presented by modern progress. The 
perplexing phenomena of deepening want with increasing 
wealth, of labor rendered more dependent and helpless 
by the very introduction of labor-saving machinery, are 
the inevitable result of natural laws as fixed and certain 
as the law of gravitation. Private property in land is the 
primary cause of the monstrous inequahties which are 
developing in modern society. It is this, and not any 
miscalculation of Nature in bringing into the world more 
mouths than she can feed, that gives rise to that tendency 
of wages to a minimum— that " iron law of wages," as the 
Germans call it— that, in spite of all advances in produc- 
tive power, compels the laboring-classes to the least return 
on which they will consent to live. It is this that produces 
all those phenomena that are so often attributed to the 
conflict of labor and capital. It is this that condemns 
Irish peasants to rags and hunger, that produces the 
pauperism of England and the tramps of America. It is 
this that makes the almshouse and the penitentiary the 
marks of what we caU high civilization ; that in the midst 
of schools and churches degrades and brutalizes men, 
crushes the sweetness out of womanhood and the joy out 
of childhood. It is this that makes lives that might be a 



THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS POSSIBLE. 81 

blessing a pain and a curse, and every year drives more 
and more to seek unbidden refuge in the gates of death. 
For, a permanent tendency to inequality once set up, 
aU the forces of progress tend to greater and greater 
inequality. 

All this is contrary to Nature. The poverty and misery, 
the vice and degradation, that spring from the unequal 
distribution of wealth, are not the results of natural law j 
they spring from our defiance of natural law. They are 
the fruits of our refusal to obey the supreme law of jus- 
tice. It is because we rob the child of his birthright j 
because we make the bounty which the Creator intended 
for aU the exclusive property of some, that these things 
come upon us, and, though advancing and advancing, we 
chase but the mirage. 

When, lit by lightning-flash or friction amid dry grasses, 
the consuming flames of fire first flung their lurid glow 
into the face of man, how must he have started back in 
affright ! When he first stood by the shores of the sea, 
how must its waves have said to him, '^Thus far shalt 
thou go, but no farther " ! Yet, as he learned to use them, 
fire became his most useful servant, the sea his easiest 
highway. The most destructive element of which we 
know— that which for ages and ages seemed the very 
thunderbolt of the angry gods — is, as we are now begin- 
ning to learn, fraught for us with untold powers of use- 
fulness. Already it enables us to annihilate space in our 
messages, to illuminate the night with new suns ; and its 
uses are only beginning. And throughout all Nature, as 
far as we can see, whatever is potent for evil is potent for 
good. "Dirt," said Lord Brougham, "is matter in the 
wrong place." And so the squalor and vice and misery 
that abound in the very heart of our civilization are but 
results of the misapplication of forces in their nature most 
elevating. 



82 THE LAND QUESTION. 

I doubt not tliat wMchever way a man may turn to 
inquire of Nature, he will come upon adjustments which 
will arouse not merely his wonder, but his gratitude. Yet 
what has most impressed me with the feeling that the 
laws of Nature are the laws of beneficent intelligence is 
what I see of the social possibilities involved in the law 
of rent. Rent* springs from natural causes. It arises, 
as society develops, from the differences in natural oppor- 
tunities and the differences in the distribution of popula- 
tion. It increases with the division of labor, with the 
advance of the arts, with the progress of invention. And 
thus, by virtue of a law impressed upon the very nature 
of things, has the Creator provided that the natural 
advance of mankind shall be an advance toward equality, 
an advance toward cooperation, an advance toward a 
social state in which not even the weakest need be crowded 
to the wall, in which even for the unfortunate and the 
cripple there may be ample provision. For this revenue, 
which arises from the common property, which represents 
not the creation of value by the individual, but the crea- 
tion by the community as a whole, which increases just 
as society develops, affords a common fund, which, properly 
used, tends constantly to equalize conditions, to open the 
largest opportunities for aU, and utterly to banish want 
or the fear of want. 

The squalid poverty that festers in the heart of our 
civilization, the vice and crime and degradation and 
ravening greed that flow from it, are the results of a 
treatment of land that ignores the simple law of justice, 
a law so clear and plain that it is universally recognized 
by the veriest savages. What is by nature the common 
birthright of all, we have made the exclusive property of 

* I, of course, use the word "rent" in its economic, not in its 
common sense, meaning by it what is commonly called ground-rent. 



THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS POSSIBLE. 83 

individuals J what is by natural law the common fund, 
from which common wants should be met, we give to a 
few that they may lord it over their fellows. And so 
some are gorged while some go hungry, and more is 
wasted than would suffice to keep all in luxury. 

In this nineteenth century, among any people who have 
begun to utilize the forces and methods of modern pro- 
duction, there is no necessity for want. There is no good 
reason why even the poorest should not have all the com- 
forts, all the luxuries, all the opportunities for culture, 
all the gratifications of refined taste that only the richest 
now enjoy. There is no reason why any one should be 
compelled to long and monotonous labor. Did invention 
and discovery stop to-day, the forces of production are 
ample for this. What hampers production is the unnatural 
inequality in distribution. And, with just distribution, 
invention and discovery would only have begun. 

Appropriate rent in the way I propose, and speculative 
rent would be at once destroyed. The dogs in the manger 
who are now holding so much land they have no use for, 
in order to extract a high price from those who do want 
to use it, would be at once choked off, and land from 
which labor and capital are. now debarred under penalty 
of a heavy fine would be thrown open to improvement 
and use. The incentive to land monopoly would be gone. 
Population would spread where it is now too dense, and 
become denser where it is now too sparse. 

Appropriate rent in this way, and not only would natu- 
ral opportunities be thus opened to labor and capital, but 
all the taxes which now weigh upon production and rest 
upon the consumer could be abolished. The demand for 
labor would increase, wages would rise, every wheel of 
production would be set in motion. 

Appropriate rent in this way, and the present expenses 
of government would be at once very much reduced— 



84 THE LAND QUESTION. 

reduced directly by the saving in the present cumbrous 
and expensive schemes of taxation, reduced indirectly by 
the diminution in pauperism and in crime. This simpli- 
fication in governmental machinery, this elevation of moral 
tone which would result, would make it possible for govern- 
ment to assume the running of railroads, telegraphs, and 
other businesses which, being in their nature monopolies, 
cannot, as experience is showing, be safely left in the 
hands of private individuals and corporations. In short, 
losing its character as a repressive agency, government 
could thus gradually pass into an administrative agency 
of the great cooperative association — society. 

For, appropriate rent in this way, and there would be 
at once a large surplus over and above what are now 
considered the legitimate expenses of government. We 
could divide this, if we wanted to, among the whole com- 
munity, share and share alike. Or we could give every 
boy a small capital for a start when he came of age, every 
girl a dower, every widow an annuity, every aged person 
a pension, out of this common estate. Or we could do 
with our great common fund many, many things that 
would be for the common benefit, many, many things that 
would give to the poorest what even the richest cannot 
now enjoy. We could establish free libraries, lectures, 
museums, art-galleries, observatories, gymnasiums, baths, 
parks, theaters ; we could line our roads with fruit-trees, 
and make our cities clean and wholesome and beautiful j 
we could conduct experiments, and offer rewards for 
inventions, and throw them open to public use.* 

Think of the enormous waste^ that now go on: The 
waste of false revenue systems, which hamper production 
and bar exchange, which fine a man for erecting a building 

* A million dollars spent in premiums and experiments would, in 
all probability, make aerial navigation an accomplished fact. 



THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS POSSIBLE. 85 

where none stood before, or for making two blades of 
grass grow where there was but one. The waste of unem- 
ployed labor, of idle machinery, of those periodical depres- 
sions of industry almost as destructive as war. The waste 
entailed by poverty, and the vice and crime and thriftless- 
ness and drunkenness that spring from it; the waste 
entailed by that greed of gain that is its shadow, and 
which makes business in large part but a masked war; 
the waste entailed by the fret and worry about the mere 
physical necessities of existence, to which so many of us 
are condemned; the waste entailed by ignorance, by 
cramped and undeveloped faculties, by the turning of 
human beings into mere machines ! 

Think of these enormous wastes, and of the others 
which, like these, are due to the fundamental wrong which 
produces an unjust distribution of wealth and distorts 
the natural development of society, and you will begin to 
see what a higher, purer, richer civilization would be 
made possible by the simple measure that will assert 
natural rights. You will begin to see how, even if no 
one but the present landholders were to be considered, 
this would be the greatest boon that could be vouchsafed 
them by society, and that, for them to fight it, would be 
as if the dog with a tin kettle tied to his tail should snap 
at the hand that offered to free him. Even the greatest 
landholder! As for such landholders as our working 
farmers and homestead-owners, the slightest discussion 
would show them that they had everything to gain by 
the change. But even such landholders as the Duke of 
Westminster and the Astors would be gainers. 

For it is of the very nature of injustice that it really 
profits no one. When and where was slavery good for 
slaveholders? Did her cruelties in America, her expul- 
sions of Moors and Jews, her burnings of heretics, profit 
Spain? Has England gained by her injustice toward 



86 THE LAND QUESTION. 

Ireland? Did not the curse of an unjust social system 
rest on Louis XIV. and Louis XV. as well as on the 
poorest peasant whom it condemned to rags and starva- 
tion— as well as on that Louis whom it sent to the block ? 
Is the Czar of Russia to be envied ? 

This we may know certainly, this we may hold to con- 
fidently : that which is unjust can really profit no one ; 
that which is just can really harm no one. Though all 
other lights move and circle, this is the pole-star by which 
we may safely steer. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS. 

WHEN we think of the civilization that might be, 
how poor and pitiful, how little better than utter 
barbarism, seems this civilization of which we boast! 
Even here, where it has had the freest field and fullest 
development ! Even here ! 

This is a broad land and a rich land. How wide it is, 
how rich it is, how the fifty millions of us already here 
are but beginning to scratch it, a man cannot begin to 
realize, till he does some thousands of miles of traveling 
over it. There are a school and a church and a newspaper 
in every hamlet ; we have no privileged orders, no legacies 
of antiquated institutions, no strong and covertly hostile 
neighbors, who in fancy or reahty oblige us to keep up 
great standing armies. "We have had the experience of 
all other nations to guide us in selecting what is good and 
rejecting what is bad. In politics, in religion, in science, 
in mechanism, everything shows the latest improvements. 
We think we stand, and in fact we do stand, in the very 
van of civilization. Food here is cheaper, wages higher, 
than anywhere else. There is here a higher average of 
education, of intelligence, of material comfort, and of 
individual opportunity, than among any other of the 
great civilized nations. Here modern civilization is at 
its very best. Yet even here ! 



88 THE LAND QUESTION. 

Last winter I was in San Francisco. There are in San 
Francisco citizens who can build themselves houses that 
cost a million and a half ; citizens who can give each of 
their children two millions of registered United States 
bonds for a Christmas present; citizens who can send 
their wives to Paris to keep house there, or rather to 
"keep palace" in a style that outdoes the lavishness of 
Russian grand dukes ; citizens whose daughters are golden 
prizes to the bluest-blooded of English aristocrats ; citizens 
who can buy seats in the United States Senate and leave 
them empty, just to show their grandeur. There are, 
also, in San Francisco other citizens. Last winter I could 
hardly walk a block without meeting a citizen begging 
for ten cents. And, when a charity fund was raised to 
give work with pick and shovel to such as would rather 
work than beg, the applications were so numerous that, 
to make the charity fund go as far as possible, one set of 
men was discharged after having been given a few days^ 
work, in order to make room for another set. This and 
much else of the same sort I saw in San Francisco last 
winter. Likewise in Sacramento, and in other towns. 

Last summer, on the plains, I took from its tired 
mother, and held in my arms, a little sun-browned baby, 
the youngest of a family of the sturdy and keen Western 
New England stock, who alone in their two wagons had 
traveled near three thousand miles looking for some place 
to locate and finding none, and who were now returning 
to where the father and his biggest boy could go to work 
on a railroad, what they had got by the sale of their 
Nebraska farm all gone. And I walked awhile by the 
side of long, lank Southwestern men who, after similar 
fruitless journeyings way up into Washington Territory, 
were going back to the Choctaw Nation. 

This winter I have been in New York. New York is 
the greatest and richest of American cities— the third city 



THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS. 89 

of the modern world, and moving steadily toward tlie 
first place. This is a time of great prosperity. Never 
before were so many goods sold, so much business done. 
Real estate is advancing with big jumps, and within the 
last few months many fortunes have been made in buying 
and selling vacant lots. Landlords nearly everywhere are 
demanding increased rents 5 asking in some of the business 
quarters an increase of three hundred per cent. Money 
is so plenty that government four per cents, sell for 114, 
and a bill is passing Congress for refunding the maturing 
national debt at three per cent, per annum, a rate that 
awhile ago in California was not thought exorbitant per 
month. All sorts of shares and bonds have been going 
up and up. You can sell almost anything if you give it 
a high-sounding corporate name and issue well-printed 
shares of stock. Seats in the Board of Brokers are worth 
thirty thousand dollars, and are cheap at that. There are 
citizens here who rake in millions at a single operation with 
as much ease as a faro-dealer rakes in a handful of chips. 

Nor is this the mere seeming prosperity of feverish 
speculation. The country is really prosperous. The crops 
have been enormous, the demand insatiable. We have at 
last a sound currency,- gold has been pouring in. The 
railroads have been choked with produce, steel rails are 
being laid faster than ever before j all sorts of factories 
are running full time or overtime. So prosperous is the 
country, so good are the times, that, at the Presidential 
election a few months since, the determining argument 
was that we could not afford to take the chance of dis- 
turbing so much material prosperity by a political change. 

Nevertheless, prosperous as are these times, citizens of 
the United States beg you on the streets for ten cents 
and five cents, and although you know that there are in 
this city two hundred charitable societies, although you 
realize that on general principles to give money in this 



90 THE LAND QUESTION. 

way is to do evil rather than good, you are afraid to refuse 
them when you read of men in this great city freezing to 
death and starving to death. Prosperous as are these 
times, women are making overalls for sixty cents a dozen, 
and you can hire citizens for trivial sums to parade up 
and down the streets all day with advertising placards on 
their backs. I get on a horse-car and ride with the driver. 
He is evidently a sober, steady man, as intelligent as a 
man can be who drives a horse-car all the time he is not 
asleep or eating his meals. He tells me he has a wife and 
four children. He gets home (if a couple of rooms can be 
called a home) at two o'clock in the morning ; he has to 
be back on his car at nine. Sunday he has a couple of 
hours more, which he has to put in in sleep, else, as he 
says, he would utterly break down. His children he never 
sees, save when one of them comes at noon or supper-time 
to the horse-car route with something for him to eat in 
a tin pail. He gets for his day's work one dollar and 
seventy-five cents— a sum that will buy at Delmonico's a 
beefsteak and cup of coffee. I say to him that it must 
be pretty hard to pay rent and keep six persons on one 
dollar and seventy-five cents a day. He says it is ; that 
he has been trying for a month to get enough ahead to 
buy a new pair of shoes, but he hasn't yet succeeded. I 
ask why he does not leave such a job. He says, ^^ What 
can I do ? There are a thousand men ready to step into 
my place ! '' And so, in this time of prosperity, he is 
chained to his car. The horses that he drives, they are 
changed six times during his working-day. They have 
lots of time to stretch themselves and rest themselves and 
eat in peace their plentiful meals, for they are worth from 
one to two hundred dollars each, and it would be a loss 
to the company for them to fall ill. But this driver, this 
citizen of the United States, he may fall ill or drop dead, 
and the company would not lose a cent. As between him 



THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS. 91 

and the beasts he drives, I am inclined to think that this 
most prosperous era is more prosperous for horses than 
for men. 

Our Napoleon of Wall Street, our rising Charlemagne 
of railroads, who came to this city with nothing but a 
new kind of mouse-trap in a mahogany box, but who now, 
though yet in the vigor of his prime, counts his wealth 
by hundreds of millions, if it can be counted at all, is 
interviewed by a reporter just as he is about to step 
aboard his palace-car for a grand combination expedition 
into the Southwest. He descants upon the services he is 
rendering in welding into one big machine a lot of smaller 
machines, in uniting into one vast railroad empire the 
separated railroad kingdoms. He likewise descants upon 
the great prosperity of the whole country. Everybody is 
prosperous and contented, he says : there is, of course, a 
good deal of misery in the big cities, but, then, there 
always is ! 

Yet not alone in the great cities. I ride on the Hudson 
River Railroad on a bitter cold day, and from one of the 
pretty towns with Dutch names gets in a constable with 
a prisoner, whom he is to take to the Albany penitentiary. 
In this case justice has been swift enough, for the crime, 
the taking of a shovel, has been committed only a few 
hours before. Such coat as the man has he keeps but- 
toned up, even in the hot car, for, the constable says, he 
has no underclothes at all. He stole the shovel to get to 
the penitentiary, where it is warm. The constable says 
they have lots of such cases, and that even in these good 
times these pretty country towns are infested with such 
tramps. With all our vast organizing, our developing of 
productive powers and cheapening of transportation, we 
are yet creating a class of utter pariahs. And they are to 
be found not merely in the great cities, but wherever the 
locomotive runs. 



92 THE LAND QUESTION. 

Is it real advance in civilization wMch, on the one hand; 
produces these great captains of industry, and, on the 
other, these social outcasts ? 

It is the year of grace 1881, and of the Republic the 
105th. The girl who has brought in coal for my fire is 
twenty years old. She was born in New York, and can 
neither read nor write. To me, when I heard it, this 
seemed sin and shame, and I got her a spelling-book. She 
is trying what she can, but it is uphill work. She has 
really no time. Last night when I came in, at eleven, 
she was not through scrubbing the haUs. She gets four 
dollars a month. Her shoes cost two dollars a pair. She 
says she can sewj but I guess it is about as I can. In 
the natural course of things, this girl will be a mother of 
citizens of the Republic. 

Underneath are girls who cmi sew ; they run sewing- 
machines with their feet aU day. I have seen girls in 
Asia carrying water-jugs on their heads and young women 
in South America bearing burdens. They were lithe and 
strong and symmetrical ; but to turn a young woman into 
motive power for a sewing-machine is to weaken and 
injure her physically. And these girls are to rear, or 
ought to rear, citizens of the Republic. 

But there is worse and worse than this. Go out into 
the streets at night, and you wiU find them fiUed with 
girls who will never be mothers. To the man who has 
known the love of mother, of sister, of sweetheart, wife, 
and daughter, this is the saddest sight of all. 

The ladies of the Brooklyn churches— they are getting 
up petitions for the suppression of Mormon polygamy; 
they would have it rooted out with pains and penalties, 
trampled out, if need be, with fire and sword ; and theii' 
reverend Congressman-elect is going, when he takes his 
seat, to introduce a most stringent biU to that end ; for 
that a man should have more wives than one is a burning 



THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS. 93 

scandal in a Ckristian country. So it isj but there are 
also other burning scandals. As for scandals that excite 
talk, I will spare Brooklyn a comparison with Salt Lake. 
But as to ordinary things: I have walked through the 
streets of Salt Lake City, by day and by night, without 
seeing what in the streets of New York or Brooklyn 
excites no comment. Polygamy is unnatural and wrong, 
no doubt of that, for Nature brings into the world some- 
thing over twenty-two boys for every twenty girls. But 
is not a state of society unnatural and wrong in which 
there are thousands and thousands of girls for whom no 
husband ever offers? Can we brag of a state of society 
in which one citizen can load his wife with more diamonds 
than an Indian chief can put beads on his squaw, while 
many other citizens are afraid to marry lest they cannot 
support a wife— a state of society in which prostitution 
flourishes? Polygamy is bad, but is it not better than 
that ? Civilization is advancing day by day ; never was 
such progress as we are making ! Yet divorces are 
increasing and insanity is increasing. What is the goal 
of a civilization that tends toward free love and the mad- 
house ? 

This is a most highly civilized community. There is 
not a bear nor wolf on Manhattan Island, save in a mena- 
gerie. Yet it is easier, where they are worst, to guard 
against bears and wolves than it is to guard against the 
human beasts of prey that roam this island. In this 
highly civilized city every lower window has to be barred, 
every door locked and bolted ; even door-mats, not worth 
twenty-five cents, you wiU see chained to the steps. Stop 
for a moment in a crowd and your watch is gone as if by 
magic ; shirt-studs are taken from their owners^ bosoms, 
and ear-rings cut from ladies' ears. Even a standing 
army of policemen do not prevent highway robbery; 
there are populous districts that to walk through after 



94 THE LAND QUESTION. 

nightfall is a risk, and where you have far more need to 
go armed and to be wary than in the backwoods. There 
are dens into which men are lured only to be drugged and 
robbed, sometimes to be murdered. All the resources of 
science and inventive genius are exhausted in making 
burglar-proof strong rooms and safes, yet, as the steel 
plate becomes thicker and harder, so does the burglar's 
tool become keener. If the combination lock cannot be 
picked, it is blown open. If not a crack large enough for 
the introduction of powder is left, then the air-pump is 
applied and a vacuum is created. So that those who in 
the heart of civilization would guard their treasures safely 
must come back to the most barbarous device, and either 
themselves, or by proxy, sleeplessly stand guard. What 
sort of a civilization is this? In what does civilization 
essentially consist if not in civility — that is to say, in 
respect for the rights of person and of property ? 

Yet this is not all, nor the worst. These are but the 
grosser forms of that spirit that in the midst of our civili- 
zation compels every one to stand on guard. What is the 
maxim of business intercourse among the most highly 
respectable classes ? That if you are swindled it will be 
your own fault ; that you must treat every man you have 
dealings with as though he but wanted the chance to cheat 
and rob you. Caveat emptor. "Let the buyer beware." 
If a man steal a few dollars he may stand a chance of 
going to the penitentiary— I read the other day of a man 
who was sent to the penitentiary for stealing four cents 
from a horse-car company. But, if he steal a million by 
business methods, he is courted and flattered, even though 
he steal the poor little savings which washerwomen and 
sewing-girls have brought to him in trust, even though 
he rob widows and orphans of the security which dead 
men have struggled and stinted to provide. 

This is a most Christian city. There are churches and 
churches. AU sorts of churches, where are preached all 



THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS. 95 

sorts of religions, save that which once in Galilee taught 
the arrant socialistic doctrine that it is easier for a camel 
to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man 
to enter the kingdom of God j all save that which once in 
Jerusalem drove the money-changers from the temple. 
Churches of brown and gray and yellow stone, lifting 
toward heaven in such noble symmetry that architecture 
seems invocation and benisonj where, on stained-glass 
windows, glow angel and apostle, and the entering light 
is dimmed to a soft glory ,• where such music throbs and 
supplicates and bursts in joy as once in St. Sophia ravished 
the souls of heathen Northmen; churches where richly 
cushioned pews let for the very highest prices, and the 
auctioneer determines who shall sit in the foremost seats ; 
churches outside of which on Sunday stand long lines of 
carriages, on each carriage a coachman. And there are 
white marble churches, so pure and shapely that the stone 
seems to have bloomed and flowered— the concrete expres- 
sion of a grand, sweet thought. Churches restful to the 
very eye, and into which the weary and heavy-laden can 
enter and join in the worship of their Creator for no 
larger an admission fee than it costs on the Bowery to 
see the bearded lady or the Zulu giant eight feet high. 
And then there are mission churches, run expressly for 
poor people, where it does not cost a cent. There is no 
lack of churches. There are, in fact, more churches than 
there are people who care to attend them. And there are 
likewise Sunday-schools, and big religious ''book con- 
cerns," and tract societies, and societies for spreading the 
light of the gospel among the heathen in foreign parts. 

Yet, land a heathen on the Battery with money in his 
pocket, and he will be robbed of the last cent of it before 
he is a day older. '' By their fruits ye shall know them." 
I wonder whether they who send missionaries to the hea- 
then ever read the daily papers. I think I could take a 
file of these newspapers, and from their daily chroniclings 



96 THE LAND QUESTION. 

match anything that could be told in the same period of 
any heathen community— at least, of any heathen com- 
munity in a like state of peace and prosperity. I think I 
could take a file of these papers, and match, horror for 
horror, all that returning missionaries have to tell — even 
to the car of Juggernaut or infants tossed from mothers' 
arms into the sacred river; even to Ashantee " customs'' 
or cannibalistic feasts. 

I do not say that such things are because of civilization, 
or because of Christianity. On the contrary, I point to 
them as inconsistent with civilization, as incompatible 
with Christianity. They show that our civilization is 
one-sided and cannot last as at present based ; they show 
that our so-called Christian communities are not Christian 
at all. I beheve a civilization is possible in which aU 
could be civilized— in which such things would be impos- 
sible. But it must be a civilization based on justice and 
acknowledging the equal rights of aU to natural oppor- 
tunities. I believe that there is in true Christianity a 
power to regenerate the world. But it must be a Chris- 
tianity that attacks vested wrongs, not that spurious thing 
that defends them. The religion which allies itself with 
injustice to preach down the natural aspirations of the 
masses is worse than atheism. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

TRUE CONSERVATISM. 

THERE are those who may look on this little book as 
very radical, in the bad sense they attach to the 
word. They mistake. This is, in the true sense of the 
word, a most conservative little book. I do not appeal 
to prejudice and passion. I appeal to intelligence. I do 
not incite to strife 5 I seek to prevent strife. 

That the civilized world is on the verge of the most 
tremendous struggle, which, according to the frankness 
and sagacity with which it is met, will be a struggle of 
ideas or a struggle of actual physical force, calling upon 
all the potent agencies of destruction which modern 
invention has discovered, every sign of the times portends. 
The voices that proclaim the eve of revolution are in 
the air. Steam and electricity are not merely transport- 
ing goods and carrying messages. They are everywhere 
changing social and industrial organization; they are 
everywhere stimulating thought, and arousing new hopes 
and fears and desires and passions ; they are everywhere 
breaking down the barriers that have separated men, and 
integrating nations into one vast organism, through 
which the same pulses throb and the same nerves tingle. 

The present situation in Great Britain is full of dangers, 
of dangers graver and nearer than those who there are 
making history are likely to see. Who in France, a cen- 
tury ago, foresaw the drama of blood so soon to open ? 



98 THE LAND QUESTION. 

Wlio in the United States dreamed of what was coming 
till the cannon-shot rang and the flag fell on Sumter? 
How confidently we said, " The American people are too 
intelligent, too practical, to go to cutting each other's 
throats '' ! How confidently we relied upon the strong 
common sense of the great masses, upon the great busi- 
ness interests, upon the universal desire to make money ! 
"War does not pay," we said, "therefore war is impos- 
sible." A shot rang over Charleston harbor j a bit of 
bunting dropped, and, riven into two hostUe camps, a 
nation sprang to its feet to close in the death-lock. 

And to just such a point are events hurrying in Great 
Britain to-day. History repeats itself, and what happened 
a century ago on one side of the English Channel is 
beginning again on the other. Already has the States- 
General met, and the Third Estate put on their hats. 
Already Necker is in despair. Already has the lit de 
justice been held, and the Tennis-Court been locked, and 
ball-cartridge been served to the Swiss Guard ! For the 
moment the forces of reaction triumph. Davitt is snatched 
to prison; a "Liberal" government carries coercion by a 
tremendous majority, and the most despotic powers are 
invoked to make possible the eviction of Irish peasants. 
The order of Warsaw is to reign in Ireland, and the 
upholders of ancient wrong deem it secure again, as the 
wave that was mounting seems sweeping back. Let them 
wait a little and they will see. For again the wave will 
mount, and higher and higher, and soon the white foam 
will seethe and hiss on its toppling crest. It is not true 
conservatism which cries " Peace ! peace ! " when there is 
no peace ; which, like the ostrich, sticks its head in the 
sand and fancies itseK secure ; which would compromise 
matters by putting more coal in the furnace, and hanging 
heavier weights on the safety-valve ! That alone is true 
conservatism which would look facts in the face, which 



TRUE CONSERVATISM. 99 

would reconcile opposing forces on the only basis on 
which reconciliation is possible — that of justice. 

I speak again of Great Britain, but I speak with refer- 
ence to the whole modern world. The true nature of 
the inevitable conflict with which modern civilization is 
everywhere beginning to throb, can, it seems to me, best 
be seen in the United States, and in the newer States even 
more clearly than in the older States. That intelligent 
Englishmen imagine that in the democratization of political 
institutions, in free trade in land, or in peasant proprie- 
torship, can be found any solution of the difficulties which 
are confronting them, is because they do not see what 
may be seen in the United States by whoever will look. 
That intelligent Americans imagine that by these ques- 
tions which are so menacingly presenting themselves in 
Europe their peace is to be unvexed, is because they shut 
their eyes to what is going on around them, because they 
attribute to themselves and their institutions what is really 
due to conditions now rapidly passing away— to the 
sparseness of population and the cheapness of land. Yet 
it is here, in this American Republic, that the true nature 
of that inevitable conflict now rapidly approaching which 
must determine the fate of modern civilization may be 
most clearly seen. 

We have here abolished all hereditary privileges and 
legal distinctions of class. Monarchy, aristocracy, prelacy, 
we have swept them all away. We have carried mere 
political democracy to its ultimate. Every child born in 
the United States may aspire to be President. Every 
man, even though he be a tramp or a pauper, has a vote, 
and one man's vote counts for as much as any other man's 
vote. Before the law all citizens are absolutely equal. 
In the name of the people all laws run. They are the 
source of all power, the fountain of aU honor. In their 
name and by their will aU government is carried on ; the 



100 THE LAND QUESTION. 

higliest officials are but their servants. Primogeniture 
and entail we have abolished wherever they existed. We 
have and have had free trade in land. We started with 
something infinitely better than any scheme of peasant 
proprietorship which it is possible to carry into effect in 
Great Britain. We have had for our public domain the 
best part of an immense continent. We have had the 
preemption law and the homestead law. It has been our 
boast that here every one who wished it could have a 
farm. We have had full liberty of speech and of the 
press. We have not merely common schools, but high 
schools and universities, open to all who may choose to 
attend. Yet here the same social difficulties apparent on 
the other side of the Atlantic are beginning to appear. 
It is already clear that our democracy is a vain pretense, 
our make-believe of equality a sham and a fraud. 

Already are the sovereign people becoming but a roi 
faineant, like the Merovingian kings of France, like the 
Mikados of Japan. The shadow of power is theirs ; but 
the substance of power is being grasped and wielded by 
the bandit chiefs of the stock exchange, the robber leaders 
who organize politics into machines. In any matter in 
which they are interested, the little finger of the great 
corporations is thicker than the loins of the people. Is it 
sovereign States or is it railroad corporations that are 
really represented in the elective Senate which we have 
substituted for an hereditary House of Lords? Where 
is the count or marquis or duke in Europe who wields 
such power as is wielded by such simple citizens as our 
Stanfords, Goulds, and Vanderbilts? What does legal 
equality amount to, when the fortunes of some citizens 
can be estimated only in hundreds of miQions, and other 
citizens have nothing? What does the suffrage amount 
to when, under threat of discharge from employment, 
citizens can be forced to vote as their employers dictate? 



TRUE CONSERVATISM. 101 

when votes can be bougM on election day for a few dol- 
lars apiece ? If there are citizens so dependent that they 
must vote as their employers wish, so poor that a few 
dollars on election day seem to them more than any higher 
consideration, then giving them votes simply adds to the 
political power of wealth, and universal suffrage becomes 
the surest basis for the establishment of tyranny. '^ Tyr- 
anny " ! There is a lesson in the very word. What are 
our American bosses but the exact antitypes of the Grreek 
tyrants, from whom the word comes? They who gave 
the word tyrant its meaning did not claim to rule by 
right divine. They were simply the Grand Sachems of 
Greek Tammanys, the organizers of Hellenic "stalwart 
machines." 

Even if universal history did not teach the lesson, it is 
in the United States already becoming very evident that 
political equality can continue to exist only upon a basis 
of social equality ; that where the disparity in the distri- 
bution of wealth increases, political democracy only makes 
easier the concentration of power, and must inevitably 
lead to tyranny and anarchy. And it is already evident 
that there is nothing in political democracy, nothing in 
popular education, nothing in any of our American 
institutions, to prevent the most enormous disparity in 
the distribution of wealth. Nowhere in the world are 
such great fortunes growing up as in the United States. 
Considering that the average income of the working 
masses of our people is only a few hundred dollars a year, 
a fortune of a million dollars is a monstrous thing— a 
more monstrous and dangerous thing under a democratic 
government than anywhere else. Yet fortunes of ten 
and twelve million dollars are with us ceasing to be 
noticeable. "We already have citizens whose wealth can 
be estimated only in hundreds of millions, and before the 
end of the century, if present tendencies continue, we are 



102 ^ THE LAND QUESTION. 

likely to have fortunes estimated in thousands of millions 
—such monstrous fortunes as the world has never seen 
since the growth of similar fortunes ate out the heart of 
Rome. And the necessary correlative of the growth of 
such fortunes is the impoverishment and loss of indepen- 
dence on the part of the masses. These great aggrega- 
tions of wealth are like great trees, which strike deep 
roots and spread wide branches, and which, by sucking 
up the moisture from the soil and intercepting the sun- 
shine, stunt and kill the vegetation around them. When 
a capital of a million dollars comes into competition with 
capitals of thousands of dollars, the smaller capitalists 
must be driven out of the business or destroyed. With 
great capital nothing can compete save great capital. 
Hence, every aggregation of wealth increases the tendency 
to the aggregation of w:ealth, and decreases the possibility 
of the employee ever becoming more than an employee, 
compelling him to compete with his fellows as to who 
will work cheapest for the great capitahst— a competition 
that can have but one result, that of forcing wages to the 
minimum at which the supply of labor can be kept up. 
Where we are is not so important as in what direction 
we are going, and in the United States all tendencies are 
clearly in this direction. Awhile ago, and any journey- 
man shoemaker could set up in business for himself with 
the savings of a few months. But now the operative 
shoemaker could not in a lifetime save enough from his 
wages to go into business for himself. And, now that 
great capital has entered agriculture, it must be with the 
same results. The large farmer, who can buy the latest 
machinery at the lowest cash prices and use it to the best 
advantage, who can run a straight furrow for miles, who 
can make special rates with railroad companies, take 
advantage of the market, and sell in large lots for the 
least commission, must drive out the small farmer of the 



TRUE CONSERVATISM. 103 

early American type just as the shoe factory has driven 
out the journeyman shoemaker. And this is going on 
to-day. 

There is nothing unnatural in this. On the contrary, 
it is in the highest degree natural. Social development is 
in accordance with certain immutable laws. And the law 
of development, whether it be the development of a solar 
system, of the tiniest organism, or of a human society, is 
the law of integration. It is in obedience to this law— a 
law evidently as all-compelling as the law of gravitation 
—that these new agencies, which so powerfully stimulate 
social growth, tend to the specialization and interdepen- 
dence of industry. It is in obedience to this law that the 
factory is superseding the independent mechanic, the 
large farm is swallowing up the little one, the big store 
shutting up the small one, that corporations are arising 
that dwarf the State, and that population tends more and 
more to concentrate in cities. Men must work together in 
larger and in more closely related groups. Production 
must be on a greater scale. The only question is, whether 
the relation in which men are thus drawn together and 
compelled to act together shaU be the natural relation 
of interdependence in equality, or the unnatural relation 
of dependence upon a master. If the one, then may 
civilization advance in what is evidently the natural 
order, each step leading to a higher step. If the other, 
then what Nature has intended as a blessing becomes a 
curse, and a condition of inequality is produced which 
will inevitably destroy civilization. Every new invention 
but hastens the catastrophe. 

Now, all this we may deduce from natural laws as fixed 
and certain as the law of gravitation. And aU this we 
may see going on to-day. This is the reason why modern 
progress, great as it has been, fails to relieve poverty; 
this is the secret of the increasing discontent which per- 



104 THE LAND QUESTION. 

vades every civilized country. Under present conditions, 
with land treated as private property, material progress 
is developing two diverse tendencies, two opposing cur- 
rents. On the one side, the tendency of increasing popu- 
lation and of all improvement in the arts of production 
is to build up enormous fortunes, to wipe out the inter- 
mediate classes, and to crowd down the masses to a level 
of lower wages and greater dependence. On the other 
hand, by bringing men closer together, by stimulating 
thought, by creating new wants, by arousing new ambi- 
tions, the tendency of modern progress is to make the 
masses discontented with their condition, to feel bitterly 
its injustice. The result can be predicted just as certainly 
as the result can be predicted when two trains are rushing 
toward each other on the same track. 

This thing is absolutely certain: Private property in 
land blocks the way of advancing civilization. The two 
cannot long coexist. Either private property in land must 
be abolished, or, as has happened again and again in the 
history of mankind, civilization must again turn back in 
anarchy and bloodshed. Let the remaining years of the 
nineteenth century bear me witness. Even now, I believe, 
the inevitable struggle has begun. It is not conservatism 
which would ignore such a tremendous fact. It is the 
blindness that invites destruction. He that is truly con- 
servative let him look the facts in the face ; let him speak 
frankly and dispassionately. This is the duty of the hour. 
For, when a great social question presses for settlement, 
it is only for a little while that the voice of Reason can 
be heard. The masses of men hardly think at any time. 
It is difficult even in sober moments to get them to reason 
calmly. But when passion is roused, then they are like a 
herd of stampeded bulls. I do not fear that present social 
adjustments can continue. That is impossible. What I 
fear is that the dams may hold tiU the flood rises to fury. 



TRUE CONSERVATISM. 105 

WTiat I fear is that dogged resistance on the one side may 
kindle a passionate sense of wrong on the other. What 
I fear are the demagogues and the accidents. 

The present condition of all civilized countries is that 
of increasing unstable equilibrium. In steam and elec- 
tricity, and all the countless inventions which they typify, 
mighty forces have entered the world. If rightly used, 
they are our servants, more potent to do our bidding 
than the genii of Arabian story. If wrongly used, they, 
too, must turn to monsters of destruction. They require 
and will compel great social changes. That we may 
already see. Operating under social institutions which 
are based on natural justice, which acknowledge the equal 
rights of aU to the material and opportunities of nature, 
their elevating power will be equally exerted, and indus- 
trial organization will pass naturally into that of a vast 
cooperative society. Operating under social institutions 
which deny natural justice by treating land as private 
property, their power is unequally exerted, and tends, by 
producing inequality, to engender forces that will tear and 
rend and shatter. The old bottles cannot hold the new 
wine. This is the ferment which throughout the civilized 
world is everywhere beginning. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

IN HOC SIGNO VINCES. 

IET me recapitulate. 
J What I want to impress upon those who may read 
this book is this : 

The land question is nowhere a mere local question ; it 
is a universal question. It involves the great problem of 
the distribution of wealth, which is everywhere forcing 
itself upon attention. 

It cannot be settled by measures which in their nature 
can have but local application. It can be settled only by 
measures which in their nature will apply everywhere. 

It cannot be settled by half-way measures. It can be 
settled only by the acknowledgment of equal rights to 
land. Upon this basis it can be settled easily and per- 
manently. 

If the Irish reformers take this ground, they wiU make 
their fight the common fight of all the peoples ; they will 
concentrate strength and divide opposition. They will 
turn the flank of the system that oppresses them, and 
awake the struggle in its very intrenchments. They will 
rouse against it a force that is like the force of rising 
tides. 

What I urge the men of Ireland to do is to proclaim, 
without limitation or evasion, that the land, of natural 
right, is the common property of the whole people, and 



IN HOC SIGNO VINCES. 107 

to propose practical measures whicli will recognize this 
right in all countries as well as in Ireland. 

What I urge the Land Leagues of the United States to 
do is to announce this great principle as of universal appli- 
cation ', to give their movement a reference to America as 
well as to Ireland j to broaden and deepen and strengthen 
it by making it a movement for the regeneration of the 
world — a movement which shall concentrate and give 
shape to aspirations that are stirring among all nations. 

Ask not for Ireland mere charity or sympathy. Let 
her call be the call of fraternity: "For yourselves, O 
brothers, as well as for us ! " Let her ralljdng cry awake 
aU who slumber, and rouse to a common struggle all who 
are oppressed. Let it breathe not old hates j let it ring 
and echo with the new hope ! 

In many lands her sons are true to her; under many 
skies her daughters burn with the love of her. Lo ! the 
ages bring their opportunity. Let those who would honor 
her bear her banner to the front ! 

The harp and the shamrock, the golden sunburst on 
the field of living green ! emblems of a country without 
nationality; standard of a people downtrodden and 
oppressed! The hour has come when they may lead 
the van of the great world-struggle. Types of harmony 
and of ever-springing hope, of Hght and of life ! The 
hour has come when they may stand for something higher 
than local patriotism ; something grander than national 
independence. The hour has come when they may stand 
forth to speak the world^s hope, to lead the world^s 
advance ! 

Torn away by pirates, tending in a strange land a 
heathen master^s swine, the slave boy, with the spirit of 
Christ in his heart, praying in the snow for those who 
had enslaved him, and returning to bring to his oppressors 
the message of the gospel, returning with good to give 



108 THE LAND QUESTION. 

where evil had been received, to kindle in the darkness a 
great light— this is Ireland^s patron saint. In his spirit 
let Ireland's struggle be. Not merely through Irish vales 
and hamlets, but into England, into Scotland, into Wales, 
wherever our common tongue is spoken, let the torch be 
carried and the word be preached. And beyond ! The 
brotherhood of man stops not with differences of speech 
any more than with seas or mountain-chains. A century 
ago it was ours to speak the ringing word. Then it was 
France's. Now it may be Ireland's, if her sons be true. 

But wherever, or by whom, the word must be spoken, 
the standard wiU be raised. No matter what the Irish 
leaders do or do not do, it is too late to settle permanently 
the question on any basis short of the recognition of 
equal natural right. And, whether the Land Leagues 
move forward or slink back, the agitation must spread to 
this side of the Atlantic. The RepubKc, the true Republic, 
is not yet here. But her birth-struggle must soon begin. 
Already, with the hope of her, men's thoughts are stirring. 

Not a republic of landlords and peasants ; not a republic 
of millionaires and tramps ; not a republic in which some 
are masters and some serve. But a republic of equal 
citizens, where competition becomes cooperation, and the 
interdependence of all gives true independence to each ; 
where moral progress goes hand in hand with intellectual 
progress, and material progress elevates and enfranchises 
even the poorest and weakest and lowliest. 

And the gospel of deliverance, let us not forget it : it is 
the gospel of love, not of hate. He whom it emancipates 
will know neither Jew nor Gentile, nor Irishman nor 
Englishman, nor German nor Frenchman, nor European 
nor American, nor difference of color or of race, nor 
animosities of class or condition. Let us set our feet on 
old prejudices, let us bury the old hates. There have 



IN HOC SIGNO VINCES. 109 

been "Holy Alliances" of kings. Let us strive for the 
Holy Alliance of the people. 

Liberty, equality, fraternity ! Write them on the ban- 
ners. Let them be for sign and countersign. Without 
equality, liberty cannot be; without fraternity, neither 
equality nor liberty can be achieved. 

Liberty— the full freedom of each bounded only by the 
equal freedom of every other ! 

Equality— the equal right of each to the use and enjoy- 
ment of all natural opportunities, to all the essentials of 
happy, healthful, human life ! 

Fraternity— that sympathy which links together those 
who struggle in a noble cause; that would live and let 
live ; that would help as well as be helped ; that, in seeking 
the good of all, finds the highest good of each 1 

" By this sign shall ye conquer ! " 

" We hold these truths to he self -evident— that all men are 
created equal; that they are endowed hy their Creator with 
certain unalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness ! "^ 

It is over a century since these words rang out. It is 
time to give them their full, true meaning. Let the 
standard be lifted that all may see it ; let the advance be 
sounded that all may hear it. Let those who would faU 
back, fall back. Let those who would oppose, oppose. 
Everywhere are those who will raUy. The stars in their 
courses fight against Sisera ! 

Henry George. 

New York, February 28, 1881. 



PROPERTY IN LAND 



A PASSAGE-AT-ARMS 

BETWEEN THE 

DUKE OF ARGYLL AND HENRY GEORGE 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 

The literary reputation and the high social and political 
rank of the Duke of Argyll have attracted unusual atten- 
tion to his arraignment of Henry Greorge's doctrine as to 
property in land. Mr. George has made a vigorous and 
aggressive reply, which is here given in juxtaposition with 
the Duke's attack. This passage-at-arms triply challenges 
attention because of the burning interest in the question 
itself at present, the representative character of the dis- 
putants, and the dialectic skill with which the controversy 
is conducted. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

£. The Prophet of San Francisco 7 

By the Duke of Argyll, in the Nineteenth Century for April, 
1884. 

II. The "Reduction to Iniquity" ' 41 

By Henry George, in the Nineteenth Century for July, 
1884. 



PROPERTY IN LAND. 



I. 

THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 

BY THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. 

THERE are some advantages in being a citizen— even 
a very humble citizen— in tlie Republic of Letters. 
If any man has ever written anything on matters of seri- 
ous concern, which others have read with interest, he will 
very soon find himself in contact with curious diversities 
of mind. Subtle sources of sympathy will open up before 
him in contrast with sources, not less subtle, of antipathy, 
and both of them are often interesting and instructive in 
the highest degree. 

A good many years ago a friend of mine, whose opinion 
I greatly value, was kind enough to tell me of his approval 
of a little book which I had then lately published. As he 
was a man of pure taste, and naturally much more inclined 
to criticism than assent, his approval gave me pleasure. 
But being a man also very honest and outspoken, he took 
care to explain that his approval was not unqualified. He 
liked the whole book except one chapter, " in which," he 
added, "it seems to me there is a good deal of nonsense." 

There was no need to ask him what that chapter was. 
I knew it very well. It could be none other than a chapter 



8 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

called " Law in Politics," whicli was devoted to the ques- 
tion how far, in human conduct and affairs, we can trace 
the Reign of Law in the same sense, or in a sense very 
closely analogous to that in which we can trace it in the 
physical sciences. There were several things in that 
chapter which my friend was not predisposed to like. In 
the first place, he was an active politician, and such men 
are sure to feel the reasoning to be unnatural and unjust 
which tends to represent all the activities of their life as 
more or less the results of circumstance. In the second 
place, he was above all other things a Free Trader, and 
the governing idea of that school is that every attempt to 
interfere by law with anything connected with trade or 
manufacture is a folly if not a crime. Now, one main 
object of my ^^ nonsense" chapter was to show that this 
doctrine is not true as an absolute proposition. It drew 
a line between two provinces of legislation, in one of which 
such interference had indeed been proved to be mischie- 
vous, but in the other of which interference had been 
equally proved to be absolutely required. Protection, it 
was shown, had been found to be wrong in all attempts to 
regulate the value or the price of anything. But Protec- 
tion, it was also shown, had been found to be right and 
necessary in defending the interests of life, health, and 
morals. As a matter of historical fact, it was pointed out 
that during the present century there had been two steady 
movements on the part of Parliament— one a movement 
of retreat, the other a movement of advance. Step by 
step legislation had been abandoned in all endeavors to 
regulate interests purely economic; while, step by step, 
not less steadily, legislation had been adopted more and 
more extensively for the regulation of matters in which 
those higher interests were concerned. Moreover, I had 
ventured to represent both these movements as equally 
important— the movement in favor of Protection in one 



THE PEOPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 9 

direction being quite as valuable as the movement against 
Protection in another direction. It was not in the nature 
of things that my friend should admit this equality, or 
even any approach to a comparison between the two 
movements. In promoting one of them he had spent his 
life, and the truths it represented were to him the subject 
of passionate conviction. Of the other movement he had 
been at best only a passive spectator, or had followed its 
steps with cold and critical toleration. To place them on 
anything like the same level as steps of advance in the 
science of government, could not but appear to him as a 
proposition involving "a good deal of nonsense." But 
critics may themselves be criticized ; and sometimes authors 
are in the happy position of seeing behind both the praise 
and the blame they get. In this case I am unrepentant. 
I am firmly convinced that the social and political value 
of the principle which has led to the repeal of all laws for 
the regulation of price is not greater than the value of the 
principle which has led to the enactment of many laws 
for the regulation of labor. If the Factory Acts and 
many others of the like kind had not been passed we 
should for many years have been hearing a hundred 
"bitter cries " for every one which assails us now, and the 
sooial problems which still confront us would have been 
much more difficult and dangerous than they are. 

Certain it is that if the train of thought which led up 
to this conclusion was distasteful to some minds, it turned 
out to be eminently attractive to many others. And of 
this, some years later, I had a curious proof. From the 
other side of the world, and from a perfect stranger, there 
came a courteous letter accompanied by the present of a 
book. The author had read mine, and he sent his own. 
In spite of prepossessions, he had confidence in a candid 
hearing. The letter was from Mr. Henry George, and 
the book was " Progress and Poverty." Both were then 



10 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

unknown to fame; nor was it possible for me fully to 
appreciate the compliment conveyed until I found that 
the book was directed to prove that almost all the evils 
of humanity are to be traced to the very existence of 
landowners, and that by divine right land could only 
Ijielong to everybody in general and to nobody in particular. 

The credit of being open to conviction is a great credit, 
and even the heaviest drafts upon it cannot well be made 
the subject of complaint. And so I could not be otherwise 
than flattered when this appeal in the sphere of politics 
was followed by another in the sphere of science. Another 
author was good enough to present me with his book ; and 
I found that it was directed to prove that all the errors 
of modern physical philosophy arise from the prevalent 
belief that our planet is a globe. In reality it is flat. 
Elaborate chapters and equally elaborate diagrams are 
devoted to the proof. At first I thought that the argu- 
ment was a joke, like Archbishop Whately's '^ Historic 
Doubts." But I soon saw that the author was quite as 
earnest as Mr. Henry Greorge. Lately I have seen that 
both these authors have been addressing public meetings 
with great success; and considering that all obvious 
appearances and the language of common life are against 
the accepted doctrine of Copernicus, it is perhaps not 
surprising that the popular audiences which have listened 
to the two reformers have evidently been almost as incom- 
petent to detect the blunders of the one as to see through 
the logical fallacies of the other. But the Californian 
philosopher has one immense advantage. Nobody has any 
personal interest in believing that the world is flat. But 
many persons may have an interest, very personal indeed, 
in believing that they have a right to appropriate a share 
in their neighbor's vineyard. 

There are, at least, a few axioms in life on which we 
are entitled to decline discussion. Even the most skeptical 



THE PEOPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 11 

minds have done so. The mind of Voltaire was certainly 
not disposed to accept without question any of the beliefs 
that underlay the rotten political system which he saw and 
hated. He was one of those who assailed it with every 
weapon, and who ultimately overthrew it. Among his 
fellows in that work there was a perfect revelry of rebel- 
lion and of unbelief. In the grotesque procession of new 
opinions which had begun to pass across the stage while 
he was still upon it, this particular opinion against prop- 
erty in land had been advocated by the famous "Jean 
Jacques." Voltaire turned his powerful glance upon it, 
and this is how he treated it :* 

B. Avez-vous oublie que Jean-Jacques, un des peres de FEglise 
Moderne, a dit, que le premier qui osa clore et cultiver un terrain 
fut I'ennemi du genre humain, qu'il fallait I'exterminer, et que les 
fruits sont a tous, et que la terre n'est a personne ? N'avons-nous 
pas deja examine ensemble cette belle proposition si utile a la So- 
ciete? 

A. Quel est ce Jean- Jacques ? II faut que ce soit quelque Hun, 
bel esprit, qui ait ^crit cette impertinence abominable, ou quelque 
mauvais plaisant, luffo magro, qui ait voulu rire de ce j[ue le monde 
entier a de plus serieux. ... 

For my own part, however, I confess that the mocking 
spirit of Voltaire is not the spirit in which I am ever 
tempted to look at the fallacies of Communism. Apart 
altogether from the appeal which was made to me by this 
author, I have always felt the high interest which belongs 
to those fallacies, because of the protean forms in which 
they tend to revive and reappear, and because of the call 
they make upon us from time to time to examine and 
identify the fundamental facts which do really govern 
the condition of mankind. Never, perhaps, have commu- 
nistic theories assumed a form more curious, or lent 

* Bictionnaire PMlosophique, 1764, art. "Loi Naturelle.'' 



12 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 

Christianity teaches us that all men ai;e brethren ; that 
their true interests are harmonious, not antagonistic. It 
gives us, as the golden rule of life, that we should do to . 
others as we would have others do to us. But out of the 
system of taxing the products and processes of labor, 
and out of its effects in increasing the price of what 
some have to sell and others must buy, has grown the 
theory of "protection," which denies this gospel, which 
holds Christ ignorant of political economy and proclaims 
laws of national well-being utterly at variance with his 
teaching. This theory sanctifies national hatreds; it 
inculcates a universal war of hostile tariffs; it teaches 
peoples that their prosperity lies in imposing on the 
productions of other peoples restrictions they do not 
wish imposed on their own ; and instead of the Christian 
doctrine of man's brotherhood it makes injury of for- 
eigners a civic virtue. 

" By their fruits ye shaU know them." Can anything 
more clearly show that to tax the products and processes 
of industry is not the way God intended public revenues 
to be raised ? 

But to consider what we propose— the raising of public 
revenues by a single tax on the value of land irrespective 
of improvements— is to see that in all respects this does 
conform to the moral law. 

Let me ask your Holiness to keep in mind that the 
value we propose to tax, the value of land irrespective of 
improvements, does not come from any exertion of labor 
or investment of capital on or in it — the values produced 
in this way being values of improvement which we 
would exempt. The value of land irrespective of 
improvement is the value that attaches to land by reason 
of increasing population and social progress. This is a 
value that always goes to the owner as owner, and never 
does and never can go to the user ; for if the user be a 



OPEN LETTEE TO POPE LEO XHI. 13 

different person from the owner lie must always pay the 
owner for it in rent or in purchase-money; while if the 
user be also the owner, it is as owner, not as user, that 
he receives it, and by selling or renting the land he can, 
as owner, continue to receive it after he ceases to be a 
user. 

Thus, taxes on land irrespective of improvement can- 
not lessen the rewards of industry, nor add to prices,* nor 
in any way take from the individual what belongs to the 
individual. They can take only the value that attaches 
to land by the growth of the community, and which 
therefore belongs to the community as a whole. 

To take land values for the state, abolishing all taxes 
on the products of labor, would therefore leave to the 

* As to this point it may be well to add that all economists are 
agreed that taxes on land values irrespective of improvement or use 
—or what in the terminology of political economy is styled rent, a 
term distinguished from the ordinary use of the word rent by being 
applied solely to payments for the use of land itself —mnst be paid 
by the owner and cannot be shifted by him on the user. To explain 
in another way the reason given in the text : Price is not determined 
by the will of the seller or the will of the buyer, but by the equation 
of demand and supply, and therefore as to things constantly demanded 
and constantly produced rests at a point determined by the cost of 
production— whatever tends to increase the cost of bringing fresh 
quantities of such articles to the consumer increasing price by check- 
ing supply, and whatever tends to reduce such cost decreasing price 
by increasing supply. Thus taxes on wheat or tobacco or cloth add 
to the price that the consumer must pay, and thus the cheapening 
in the cost of producing steel which improved processes have made 
in recent years has greatly reduced the price of steel. But land has 
no cost of production, since it is created by God, not produced by 
man. Its price therefore is fixed— 1 (monopoly rent), where land is 
held in close monopoly, by what the owners can extract from the 
users under penalty of deprivation and consequently of starvation, 
and amounts to all that common labor can earn on it beyond what is 
necessary to life ; 2 (economic rent proper), where there is no special 
monopoly, by what the particular land will yield to common labor 



14 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

universally admitted not as a theory but as a fact, and one 
of the most clearly ascertained of all the facts of economic 
science. But, like all Communists, Mr. George hates the 
\very name of Malthus. He admits and even exaggerates 
^he fact of pressure as applicable to the people of America, 
tie admits it as applicable to the people of Europe, and of 
lL\dia, and of China. He admits it as a fact as applicable 
ni^^re or less obviously to every existing population of the 
globe. But he will not allow the fact to be generalized 
inta a law. He will not allow this— because the generaH- 
zatio^n suggests a cause which he denies, and shuts out 
anotlier cause which he asserts. But this is not a legiti- 
mate ireason for refusing to express phenomena in terms 
as wict > and general as their actual occurrence. Never 
mind C£ uses until we have clearly ascertained facts j but 
when ti ese are clearly ascertained let us record them 
fearlesslv in terms as wide as the truth demands. If 
there is iiot a single population on the globe which does 
not exhibi't the fact of pressure more or less severe on the 
limits of ti^ieir actual subsistence, let us at least recognize 
this fact in all its breadth and sweep. The diversities of 
laws and institutions, of habits and of manners, are 
almost infinite. Yet amid aU these diversities this one 
fact is universal. Mr. G-eorge himseK is the latest witness. 
He sees it to "be a fact— a terrible and alarming fact, in 
his opinion— Us applicable to the young and hopeful 
society of the JSlew World. In a country where there is 
no monarch, no aristocracy, no ancient families, no entails 
of land, no stan ding armies worthy of the name, no pen- 
sions, no courtieips, where aU are absolutely equal before 
the law, there, eve.n there— in this paradise of Democracy, 
Mr. George teUs lis that the pressure of the masses upon 
the means of livi^^g and enjoyment which are open to 
them is becoming \inore and more severe, and that the 






THE PEOPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 15 

inequalities of men are becoming as wide and glaring as 
in the oldest societies of Asia and of Europe. 

The contrast between this wonderfid confirmation of 
Malthusian facts, and the vehement denunciation of Mai- ^ 
thusian " law," is surely one of the curiosities of literature.^ 
But the explanation is clear enough. Mr. George seesj 
that facts common to so many nations must be due in 
some cause as common as the result. But, on the oth^r 
hand, it would not suit his theory to admit that this cai^ise 
can possibly be anything inherent in the constitution of 
Man, or in the natural System under which he lives. 
From this region, therefore, he steadily averts his ^ace. 
There are a good many other facts in human nature and 
in human conditions that have this common and uni?v^ersal 
character. There are a number of such facts cori/nected 
with the mind, another number connected with the body, 
and still another number connected with the oppoE'tunities 
of men. But aU of these Mr. George passes over— /in order 
that he may fix attention upon one solitary fact -7- namely, 
that in aU nations individual men, and individual commu- 
nities of men, have hitherto been allowed to a'^quire bits 
of land and to deal with them as their own. 

The distinction between Natural Law aid Positive 
Institution is indeed a distinction not to be neglected. 
But it is one of the very deepest subjects in all philosophy, 
and there are many indications that Mr. George has dipped 
into its abysmal waters with the very shortest of sounding- 
lines. Human laws are evolved out of human instincts, 
and these are among the gifts of nature. Reason may 
pervert them, and Reason is all the more apt to do so 
when it begins to spin logical webs out of its own bowels. 
But it may be safely said that in direct proportion as 
human laws, and the accepted ideas on which they rest, 
are really universal, in that same proportion they have a 



\ 16 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

\ claim to be regarded as really natural, and as tlie legiti- 
. mate expression of fundamental truths. Sometimes the 
very men who set up as reformers against such laws, and 
\denounce as ''stupid"* even the greatest nations which 
Jbave abided by them, are themselves unconsciously subject 
to the same ideas, and are only working out of them some 
perverted application. 

\For here, again, we come upon another wonderful cir- 
cumstance affecting Mr. George's writings. I have spoken 
of Mr. George as a citizen of the United States, and also 
as a citizen of the particular State of California. In this 
latter capacity, as the citizen of a democratic government, 
he is a member of that government, which is the govern- 
ment of the whole people. Now, what is the most striking 
feature about the power claimed by that government, and 
actually exercised by it every day? It is the power of 
excludiiig the whole human race absolutely, except on its 
own conditions, from a large portion of the earth's surface 
— a portion so large that it embraces no less than ninety- 
nine millions of acres, or 156,000 square miles of plain and 
vaUey, of mountain and of hill, of lake and river, and of 
estuaries of the sea. Yet the community which claims 
and exercisi^s this exclusive ownership over this enormous 
territory is, as compared with its extent, a mere handful 
of men. The whole population of the State of California 
represents only the fractional number of 5.5 to the square 
mile. It is less than one-quarter of the population of 
London. If the whole of it could be collected into one 
place they would hardly make a black spot in the enormous 
landscape if it were swept by a telescope. Such is the 
little company of men which claims to own absolutely and 
exclusively this enormous territory. Yet it is a member 

* This is the epithet iapplied by Mr. George to the English people, 
because they will persist in allowing what all other nations have 
equally allowed. 



THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 17 

of this commimity wlio goes about tlie world preachinf; 
the doctrine, as a doctrine of divine right, that land is to 
be as free as the atmosphere, which is the common prop- 
erty of all, and in which no exclusive ownership can "be 
claimed by any. It is true that Mr. George does denounce 
the conduct of his own Government in the matter of its 
disposal of land. But strange to say, he does not denoimce 
it because it claims this exclusive ownership. On the 
contrary, he denounces it because it ever consents to part 
with it. Not the land only, but the very atmosphere of 
California — to use his own phraseology — is to be held so 
absolutely and so exclusively as the property of this com- 
munity, that it is never to be parted with except on lease 
and for such annual rent as the Government mnj deter- 
mine. Who gave this exclusive ownership jver this 
immense territory to this particular community? Was 
it conquest? And if so, may it not be as rightfully 
acquired by any who are strong enough to seize it ? And 
if exclusive ownership is conferred by conquest, then has 
it not been open to every conquering army, find to every 
occupying host in all ages and in all countries of the world, 
to establish a similar ownership, and to dc^al with it as 
they please ? 

It is at this point that we catch sight of' one aspect of 
Mr. George^s theory in which it is capab'^e of at least a 
rational explanation. The question how a comparatively 
small community of men like the first- gold-diggers of 
California and their descendants can wit^h best advantage 
use or employ its exclusive claims of dwnership over so 
vast an area, is clearly quite an open qiiestion. It is one 
thing for any given political society to refuse to divide its 
vacant territory among indi^ddual o'^wners. It is quite 
another thing for a political society, which for a^v^^s has 
recognized such ownership and encouraged it, ^his been 
faith with those who have acquired/i. such owne has taken 



18 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

^have lived and labored, and bought and sold, and willed 
^iipon tbe faith of it. If Mr. George can persuade the 
^'tate of which he is a citizen, and the Government of 
^\ich he is in this sense a member, that it would be best 
■•^^'ver any more to sell any bit of its unoccupied territory 
*^ *\iny individual, by all means let him try to do so, and 
som Q plausible arguments might be used in favor of such 
^ ^^Wrse. But there is a strong presumption against it 
and iyim. The question of the best method of disposing 
01 suc^,]^ territory has been before every one of our great 
coloni€:jg^ and before the United States for several genera- 
tions; Qj^^ ^-^Q universal instinct of them all has been 
that tm^ individual ownership of land is the one great 
attractio j^ which they can hold out to the settlers whom 
it IS tneir^ iijgliest interest to invite and to establish. They 
know tha^ ^j^^ jg^^^^j ^^ ^ country is never so well "nation- 
anzea ^ as -y^rlien it is committed to the ownership of men 
whose intCpgg^ ^^ ^g ^^ make the most of it. They know 
that under j^^ other inducement could men be found to 
clear the soq from stifling forests, or to water it from arid 
wastes, or t ^ (Jrain it from pestilential swamps, or to 
mclose it froi-^ ^-^^ access of wild animals, or to defend it 
irom^ the assi^^^g ^^ savage tribes. Accordingly their 
verdict has be^^j unanimous ; and it has been given under 
conditions in Vhich they were free from all traditions 
except those "^'^{q]^ they carried with them as parts of 
then- own nature.^ ^^^ harmony and correspondence with the 
nature of things ctround them. I do not stop to argue this 
question here; biv^^ i do stop to point out that both solu- 
tions of it— the o\q (^^ite as much as the other— involve 
the exclusive occupation of land by individuals, and the 
doctrine oi absolute ownership vested in particular com- 
"""* ThT? ^s agains.c ^^ ^-^^ ^^g^ ^f mankind. Both are 
because ^"icompatibie -^th the fustian which compares the 
equaUyaL occupation ^f j^^^^ ^o exclusive occupation of 



THE PROPHET OF SAN FEANCISCO. 19 

the atmosphere. Supposing that settlers could be found 
willing to devote the years of labor and of skill which are 
necessary to make wild soils productive, under no other 
tenure than that of a long ''improvement lease," paying 
of course for some long period either no rent at all, or 
else a rent which must be purely nominal ; supposing this 
to be true, still equally the whole area of any given region 
would soon be in the exclusive possession for long periods 
of time of a certain number of individual farmers, and 
would not be open to the occupation by the poor of all 
the world. Thus the absolute ownership which Mr. George 
declares to be blasphemous against God and Nature, is 
still asserted on behalf of some mere fraction of the human 
race, and this absolute ownership is again doled out to the 
members of this small community, and to them alone, in 
such shares as it considers to be most remunerative to 
itself. 

And here again, for the third time, we come upon a 
most remarkable testimony to facts in Mr. George's book, 
the import and bearing of which he does not apparently 
perceive. Of course the question whether it is most 
advantageous to any given society of men to own and 
cultivate its own lands in severalty or in common, is a 
question largely depending on the conduct and the motives 
and the character of governments, as compared with the 
conduct and the character and the motives of individual 
men. In the disposal and application of wealth, as well 
as in the acquisition of it, are men more pure and honest 
when they act in public capacities as members of a Govern- 
ment or of a Legislature, than when they act in private 
capacities toward their fellow-men ? Is it not notoriously 
the reverse ? Is it not obvious that men will do, and are 
constantly seen doing, as politicians, what they would be 
ashamed to do in private life? And has not this been 
proved under all the forms which government has taken 



20 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

in the history of political societies ? Lastly, I will ask one 
other question— Is it not true that, to say the very least, 
this inherent tendency to corruption has received no check 
from the democratic constitutions of those many "new 
worlds " in which kings were left behind, and aristocracies 
have not had time to be established ? 

These are the very questions which Mr. Greorge answers 
with no faltering voice j and it is impossible to disregard 
his evidence. He declares over and over again, in lan- 
guage of virtuous indignation, that government in the 
United States is everywhere becoming more and more 
corrupt. Not only are the Legislatures corrupt, but that 
last refuge of virtue even in the worst societies— the 
Judiciary — is corrupt also. In none of the old countries 
of the world has the very name of politician fallen so low 
as in the democratic communities of America. Nor would 
it be true to say that it is the wealthy classes who have 
corrupted the constituencies. These— at least to a very 
large extent— are themselves corrupt. Probably there is 
no sample of the Demos more infected with corruption 
than the Demos of New York.' Its management of the 
municipal rates is alleged to be a system of scandalous 
jobbery. Now, the wonderful thing is that of all this 
Mr. Greorge is thoroughly aware. He sees it, he repeats 
it in every variety of form. Let us hear a single 
passage :* 

It behooves us to look facts in the face. The experiment of popu- 
lar government in the United States is clearly a failure. Not that 
it is a failure everywhere and in everything. An experiment of this 
kind does not have to be fully worked out to be proved a failure. 
But speaking generally of the whole country, from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the G-ulf, our government by the 
people has in large degree become, is in larger degree becoming, 
government by the strong and unscrupulous. 

* "Social Problems,'' Chapter 11. 



THE PROPHET OF SAN FEANCISCO. 21 

Again, I say that it is fair to remember that Mr. George 
is a Pessimist. But while remembering this, and making 
every possible allowance for it, we must not less remember 
that his evidence does not stand alone. In the United 
States, from citizens still proud of their country, and out 
of the United States, from representative Americans, I 
have been told of transactions from personal knowledge 
which conclusively indicated a condition of things closely 
corresponding to the indictment of Mr. George. At all 
events we cannot be wrong in our conclusion that it is not 
among the public bodies and Governments of the States 
of America that we are to look in that country for the 
best exhibitions of purity or of virtue. 

Yet it is to these bodies — legislative, administrative, and 
judicial, of which he gives us such an account— that Mr. 
George would confine the rights of absolute ownership in 
the soil. It is these bodies that he would constitute the 
sole and universal landlord, and it is to them he would 
confide the duty of assessing and of spending the rents of 
everybody all over the area of every State. He tells us 
that a great revenue, fit for the support of some such great 
rulers as have been common in the Old World, could be 
afforded out of one-half the " waste and stealages " of such 
Municipalities as his own at San Francisco. What would 
be the "waste and stealages^' of a governing body having 
at its disposal the whole agricultural and mining wealth 
of such States as California and Texas, of Illinois and 
Colorado ? 

But this is not all. The testimony which is borne by 
Mr. George as to what the governing bodies of America 
now are is as nothing to the testimony of his own writings 
as to what they would be— if they were ever to adopt his 
system, and if they were ever to listen to his teaching. 
Like all Communists, he regards Society not as consisting 
of individuals whose separate weKare is to be the basis of 



22 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

the weKare of the whole, but as a great abstract Person- 
ality, in which all power is to be centered, and to which 
all separate rights and interests are to be subordinate. 
If this is to be the doctrine, we might at least have hoped 
that with such powers committed to Governments, as 
against the individual, corresponding duties and responsi- 
bilities, toward the individual, would have been recognized 
as an indispensable accompaniment. If, for example, 
every political society as a whole is an abiding Personality, 
with a continuity of rights over aU its members, we might 
at least have expected that the continuous obligation of 
honor and good faith would have been recognized as 
equally binding on this Personality in all its relations 
with those who are subject to its rule. But this is not 
at all Mr. George's view. On the contrary, he preaches 
systematically not only the high privilege, but the positive 
duty of repudiation. He is not content with urging that 
no more bits of unoccupied land should be ever sold, but 
he insists upon it that the ownership of every bit already 
sold shall be resumed without compensation to the settler 
who has bought it, who has spent upon it years of labor, 
and who from first to last has relied on the security of 
the State and on the honor of its Government. ' There is 
no mere practice of corruption which has ever been alleged 
against the worst administrative body in any country that 
can be compared in corruption with the desolating dis- 
honor of this teaching. In olden times, under violent and 
rapacious rulers, the Prophets of Israel and of Judah used 
to raise their voices against aU. forms of wrong and rob- 
bery, and they pronounced a special benediction upon 
him who sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not. 
But the new Prophet of San Francisco is of a different 
opinion. Ahab would have been saved aU his trouble, 
and Jezebel would have been saved all her tortuous 
intrigues if only they could have had beside them the 



THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 23 

voice of Mr. Henry George. Elijah was a fool. What 
right could Naboth have to talk about the " inheritance of 
his fathers " ? * His fathers could have no more right to 
acquire the ownership of those acres on the Hill of Jezreel 
than he could have to continue in the usurpation of it. 
No matter what might be his pretended title, no man and 
no body of men could give it : — not Joshua nor the Judges ; 
not Saul nor David 5 not Solomon in all his glory — could 
"make sure" to Naboth's fathers that portion of Grod's 
earth against the undying claims of the head of the State, 
and of the representative of the whole people of Israel. 

But now another vista of consequence opens up before 
us. If the doctrine be established that no faith is to be 
kept with the owners of land, will the same principle not 
apply to tenancy as well as ownership ? If one generation 
cannot bind the next to recognize a purchase, can one 
generation bind another to recognize a lease ? If the one 
promise can be broken and ought to be broken, why 
should the other be admitted to be binding 1 If the accu- 
mulated value arising out of many years, or even genera- 
tions, of labor, can be and ought to be appropriated, is 
there any just impediment against seizing that value every 
year as it comes to be? If this new gospel be indeed 
gospel, why should not this Calif ornian form of "faith 
unfaithful" keep us perennially and forever "falsely 
true"? 

Nay, more, is there any reason why the doctrine of 
repudiation should be confined to pledges respecting 
either the tenancy or the ownership of land ? This ques- 
tion naturally arose in the minds of aU who read with 
any intelligence "Progress and Poverty" when it first 
appeared. But the extent to which its immoral doctrines 
might be applied was then a matter of inference only, 

* 1 Kings xxi. 3. 



24 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

however clear that inference might be. If all owners of 
land, great and small, might be robbed, and onght to be 
robbed of that which Society had from time immemorial 
allowed them and encouraged them to acquire and to call 
their own ; if the thousands of men, women, and children 
who directly and indirectly live on rent, whether in the 
form of returns to the improver, or of mortgage to the 
capitalist, or jointure to the widow, or portion to the 
children, are all equally to be ruined by the confiscation 
of the fund on which they depend— are there not other 
funds which would be all swept into the same net of envy 
and of violence ? In particular, what is to become of that 
great fund on which also thousands and thousands depend 
— men, women, and children, the aged, the widow, and 
the orphan— the fund which the State has borrowed and 
which constitutes the Debt of Nations ? Even in " Prog- 
ress and Poverty" there were dark hints and individual 
passages which indicated the goal of aU. its reasoning in 
this direction. But men's intellects just now are so flabby 
on these subjects, and they are so fond of shaking their 
heads when property in land is compared with property in 
other things, that such suspicions and forebodings as to 
the issue of Mr. George's arguments would to many have 
seemed overstrained. Fortunately, in his later book he 
has had the courage of his opinions, and the logic of false 
premises has steeled his moral sense against the iniquity 
of even the most dishonorable conclusions. All National 
Debts are as unjust as property in land ; all such Debts 
are to be treated with the sponge. As no faith is due to 
landowners, or to any who depend on their sources of 
income, so neither is any faith to be kept with bond- 
holders, or with any who depend on the revenues which 
have been pledged to them. The Jew who may have lent 
a million, and the smaU tradesman who may have lent his 
little savings to the State— the trust-funds of children and 



THE PEOPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 25 

of widows wHcli have been similarly lent— are all equally 
to be the victims of repudiation. When we remember 
the enormous amount of the National Debts of Europe and 
of the American States, and the vast number of persons 
of all kinds and degrees of wealth whose property is 
invested in these "promises to pay/^ we can perhaps 
faintly imagine the ruin which would be caused by the 
gigantic fraud recommended by Mr. George. Take Eng- 
land alone. About seven hundred and fifty millions is 
the amount of her Public Debt. This great sum is held 
by about 181,721 persons, of whom the immense majority 
— about 111,000 — receive dividends amounting to £400 a 
year and under. Of these, again, by far the greater part 
enjoy incomes of less than £100 a year. And then the 
same principle is of course applicable to the debt of all 
public bodies ; those of the Municipalities alone, which are 
rapidly increasing, would now amount to something like 
one hundred and fifty millions more. 

Everything in America is on a gigantic scale, even its 
forms of villainy, and the villainy advocated by Mr. George 
is an illustration of this as striking as the Mammoth Cave 
of Kentucky, or the frauds of the celebrated " Tammany 
Ring" in New York. The world has never seen such a 
Preacher of Unrighteousness as Mr. Henry George. For 
he goes to the roots of things, and shows us how unfounded 
are the rules of probity, and what mere senseless super- 
stitions are the obligations which have been only too long 
acknowledged. Let us hear him on National Debts, for 
it is an excellent specimen of his childish logic, and of his 
profligate conclusions : 

The institution of public debts, like tlie institution of private 
property in land, rests upon the preposterous assumption that one 
generation may bind another generation. If a man were to come to 
me and say, "Here is a promissory note which your great-grand- 
father gave to my great-grandfather, and which you will oblige me 



26 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

by paying," I would laugh at Mm, and tell him that if he wanted to 
collect his note he had better hunt up the man who made it ; that I 
had nothing to do with my great-grandfather's promises. And 
if he were to insist upon payment, and to call my attention to the 
terms of the bond in which my great-grandfather expressly stipu- 
lated with his great-grandfather that I should pay him, I would only 
laugh the more, and be the more certain that he was a lunatic. To 
such a demand any one of us would reply in effect, "My great-grand- 
father was evidently a knave or a joker, and your great-grandfather 
was certainly a fool, which quality you surely have inherited if you 
expect me to pay you money because my great-grandfather promised 
that I should do so. He might as well have given your great-grand- 
father a draft upon Adam or a check upon the First National Bank 
of the Moon." 

Yet upon this assumption that ascendants may bind descendants, 
that one generation may legislate for another generation, rests the 
assumed validity of our land titles and public debts.* 

Yet even in this wonderful passage we have not touclied 
the bottom of Mr. Greorge's lessons in the philosophy of 
spoliation. If we may take the property of those who 
have trusted to our honor, surely it must be still more 
legitimate to take the property of those who have placed 
in us no such confidence. If we may fleece the public 
creditor, it must be at least equally open to us to fleece all 
those who have invested otherwise their private fortunes. 
AIL the other accumulations of industry must be as right- 
fully liable to confiscation. Whenever " the people " see 
any large handful in the hands of any one, they have a 
right to have it— in order to save themselves from any 
necessity of submitting to taxation. 

Accordingly we find, as usual, that Mr. George has a 
wonderful honesty in avowing what hitherto the unin- 
structed world has been agreed upon considering as 
dishonesty. But this time the avowal comes out under 
circumstances which are deserving of special notice. We 

* "Social Problems," Chapter XVI. 



THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 27 

all know that not many years ago tlie United States was 
engaged in a civil war of long duration, at one time 
apparently of doubtful issue, and on which the national 
existence hung. I was one of those — not too many in 
this country— who held from the beginning of that ter- 
rible contest that ''the North" were right in fighting it. 
Lord Russell, on a celebrated occasion, said that they 
were fighting for "dominion." Yes; and for what else 
have nations ever fought, and by what else than dominion, 
in one sense or another — have great nations ever come to 
be ? The Demos has no greater right to fight for dominion 
than Kings ; but it has the same. But behind and above 
the existence of the Union as a nation there was the further 
question involved whether, in this nineteenth century of 
the Christian era, there was to be established a great 
dominion of civilized men which was to have negro 
slavery as its fundamental doctrine and as the cherished 
basis of its constitution. On both of these great questions 
the people of the Northern States— in whatever propor- 
tions the one or the other issue might affect individual 
minds— had before them as noble a cause as any which 
has ever called men to arms. It is a cause which will be 
forever associated in the memory of mankind with one 
great figure— the figure of Abraham Lincoln, the best and 
highest representative of the American people in that 
tremendous crisis. In nothing has the bearing of that 
people been more admirable than in the patient and willing 
submission of the masses, as of one man, not only to the 
desolating sacrifice of life which it entailed, but to the 
heavy and lasting burden of taxation which was insepa- 
rable from it. It is indeed deplorable— nothing I have 
ever read in aU literature has struck me as so deplorable 
—that at this time of day, when by patient continu- 
ance in well-doing the burden has become comparatively 
light, and there is a near prospect of its final disappear- 



28 , PROPERTY IN LAND. 

ance, one single American citizen should be found who 
appreciates so little the glory of his country as to express 
his regret that they did not begin this great contest by 
an act of stealing. Yet this is the case with Mr. Henry 
George. In strict pursuance of his dishonest doctrines of 
repudiation respecting public debts, and knowing that the 
war could not have been prosecuted without funds, he 
speaks with absolute bitterness of the folly which led the 
Government to ''shrink'^ from at once seizing the whole, 
or all but a mere fraction, of the property of the few 
individual citizens who had the reputation of being excep- 
tionally rich. If, for example, it were known that any 
man had made a fortune of £200,000, the Washington 
Government ought not to have "shrunk" from taking 
the whole— except some £200, which remainder might, 
perhaps, by a great favor, be left for such support as it 
might afford to the former owner. And so by a number 
of seizures of this kind, aU over the States, the war might 
possibly have been conducted for the benefit of all at the 
cost of a very few.* 

It may be worth while to illustrate how this would have 
worked in a single instance. When I was in New York, 
a few years ago, one of the sights which was pointed out 
to me was a house of great size and of great beauty both 
in respect to material and to workmanship. In these 
respects at least, if not in its architecture, it was equal to 
any of the palaces which are owned by private citizens in 
any of the richest capitals of the Old World. It was built 
wholly of pure white marble, and the owner, not having 
been satisfied with any of the marbles of America, had 

* Mr. George's words are these : "If, when we called on men to 
die for their country, we had not shrunk from taking, if necessary, 
nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand dollars from every million- 
aire, we need not have created any debt" ("Social Problems," 
Chapter XVI. 



THE PROPHET OF SAN FEANCISCO. ,^9 

gone to the expense of importing Italian marble for Irhe 
building. This beautiful and costly house was, I was 
further told, the property of a Scotchman who had e mi- 
grated to America with no other fortune and no ot^her 
capital than his own good brains. He had begun^i by 
selling ribbons. By selling cheap, and for ready mroney, 
but always also goods of the best quahty, he had soon 
acquired a reputation for dealings which were emi^aently 
advantageous to those who bought. But tho?.«e who 
bought were the public, and so a larger and a largter por- 
tion of the public became eager to secure the advantages 
of this exceptionally moderate and honest dealer. ; With 
the industry of his race he had also its thrift, and the 
constant turning of his capital on an ever-increasing scale, 
coupled with his own limited expenditure, had so'Jbn led to 
larger and larger savings. These, again, had b/een judi- 
ciously invested in promoting every public undertaking 
which promised advantage to his adopted country, and 
which, by fulfilling that promise, could aloirie become 
remunerative. And so by a process which,; in every step 
of it, was an eminent service to the commiiinity of which 
he was a member, he became what is called a millionaire. 
Nor in the spending of his wealth had he done otherwise 
than contribute to the taste and splendor /of his country, 
as well as to the lucrative emplojonent of its people. All 
Nature is full of the love of ornament, ;and the habita- 
tions of creatures, even the lowest in the scale of being, 
are rich in coloring and in carving of the most exquisite 
and elaborate decoration. It is only f„n ignorant and 
uncultured spirit which denounces the sa.me love of orna- 
ment in Man, and it is a stupid doctrine which sees in it 
nothing but a waste of means. The great merchant of 
New York had indeed built his house at great cost ; but 
this is only another form of saying that he had spent 
among the artificers of that city a great^ sum of money, 



30 PROPEETY IN LAND. 

and had in the same proportion contributed to the only 
emyployment by which they live. In every way, therefore, 
bot. h as regards the getting and the spending of his wealth, 
this\ millionaire was an honor and a benefactor to his 
conn try. This is the man on whom that same country 
woulii have been incited by Mr. Henry George to turn 
the bi<g eyes of brutal envy, and to rob of aU. his earnings. 
It is mot so much the dishonesty or the violence of such 
teachii^g that strikes us most, but its unutterable mean- 
ness. That a great nation, having a great cause at stake, 
and rejoresenting in the history of the world a life-and- 
death s truggle against barbarous institutions, ought to 
have begun its memorable war by plundering a few of 
its own citizens— this is surely the very lowest depth 
which ha s ever been reached by any political philosophy. 
And n^t less instructive than the results of this philos- 
ophy are > the methods of its reasoning, its methods of 
illustration, and its way of representing facts. Of these 
we cannot ha^^e a better example than the passage before 
quoted, in which Mr. Henry George explains the right 
of nations and the right of individuals to repudiate an 
hereditary debt. It is well to see that the man who 
defends the most dishonorable conduct on the part of 
Governments defends it equally on the part of private 
persons. The passage is a typical specimen of the kind 
of stuff of which Mr. George's works are full. The ele- 
ment of plausibility in it is the idea that a man should 
not be held responsible for promises to which he was not 
himself a consenting party. This idea is presented by 
itself, with a careful suppression of the conditions which 
make it inapplicable to the case in hand. Hereditary 
debts do not attach to persons except in respect to heredi- 
tary possessions. Are these possessions to be kept while 
the corresponding obligations are to be denied! Mr. 
George is loud on the absurdity of calhng upon him to 
honor any prom:' se which his great-grandfather may have 



THE PROPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 31 

made, but lie is silent about giving up any resources 
which his great-grandfather may have left. Possibly he 
might get out of this difficulty by avowing that he would 
allow no property to pass from one generation to another 
—not even from father to son— that upon every death all 
the savings of every individual should be confiscated by 
the State. Such a proposal would not be one whit more 
violent, or more destructive to society, than other pro- 
posals which he does avow. But so far as I have observed, 
this particular consequence of his reasoning is either not 
seen, or is kept in the dark. With all his apparent and 
occasional honesty in confronting results however anar- 
chical, there is a good deal of evidence that he knows how 
to conceal his hand. The prominence given in his agita- 
tion to an attack on the particular class of capitalists who 
are owners of land, and the total or comparative silence 
which he maintains on his desire to rob fund-holders of 
all kinds, and especially the public creditor, is a clear 
indication of a strategy which is more dexterous than 
honest. And so it may really be true that he repudiates 
all hereditary debt because he will also destroy all heredi- 
tary succession in savings of any kind. But it must be 
observed that even thus he cannot escape from the incon- 
sistency I have pointed out, as it affects all public debts. 
These have all been contracted for the purpose of effecting 
great national objects, such as the preservation of national 
independence, or the acquisition of national territory, or 
the preparations needed for national defense. The State 
cannot be disinherited of the benefits and possessions thus 
secured, as individuals may be disinherited of their fathers' 
gains. In the case of National Debts, therefore, it is quite 
clear that the immorality of Mr. G-eorge's argument is as 
conspicuous as the childishness of its reasoning. 

But there are other examples, quite as striking, of the 
incredible absurdity of his reasoning, which are immedi- 
ately connected with his dominant idea about property in 



32 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

land. Thus the notion that because all the natural and 
elementary substances which constitute the raw materials 
of human wealth are substances derived from the ground, 
therefore all forms of that wealth must ultimately tend 
to concentration in the hands of those who own the land ; 
this notion must strike a landowner as one worthy only 
of Bedlam. He may not be able at a moment's notice to 
unravel all the fallacies on which it rests, and he may 
even be able to see in it the mad mimicry of logic which 
deceives the ignorant. But it does not need to be a land- 
owner to see immediately that the conclusion is an 
absurdity. We have only to apply this notion in detail in 
order to see more and more clearly its discrepancy with 
fact. Thus, for example, we may put one application of 
it thus : All houses are built of materials derived from the 
soil, of stone, of lime, of brick, or of wood, or of all four 
combined. But of these materials three are not only 
products of the soil, but parts of its very substance and 
material. Clearly it must follow that the whole value of 
house property must end in passing into the hands of 
those who own these materials, quarries of building-stone, 
beds of brick-earth, beds of lime, and forests. Unfortu- 
nately for landowners, this wonderful demonstration does 
not, somehow, take effect. 

But Mr. Henry George's processes in matters of reason- 
ing are not more absurd than his assumptions in matters 
of fact. The whole tone is based on the assumption that 
owners of land are not producers, and that rent does not 
represent, or represents only in a very minor degree, the 
interest of capital. Even an American ought to know 
better than this; because, although there are in some 
parts of the United States immense areas of prairie land 
which are ready for the plow with almost no preliminary 
labor, yet even in the New World the areas are still more 
immense in which the soil can only be made capable of 



THE PEOPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 33 

producing Imaiaii food by tlie hardest of labor, and the 
most prolonged. But in the old countries of Europe, and 
especially in our own, every landowner knows well, and 
others ought to know a little, that the present condition 
of the soil is the result of generations of costly improve- 
ments, and of renewed and reiterated outlays to keep 
these improvements in effective order. Yet on this subject 
I fear that many persons are almost as ignorant as Mr. 
Henry George. My own experience now extends over a 
period of the best part of forty years. During that time 
I have buHt more than fifty homesteads complete for man 
and beast ; I have drained and reclaimed many hundreds, 
and inclosed some thousands, of acres. In this sense I 
have ^' added house to house and field to field," not— as 
pulpit orators have assumed in similar cases— that I might 
" dweU. alone in the land," but that the cultivating class 
might live more comfortably, and with better appliances 
for increasing the produce of the soil. I know no more 
animating scene than that presented to us in the essays 
and journals which give an account of the agricultural 
improvements effected in Scotland since the close of the 
Civil Wars in 1745. Thousands and thousands of acres 
have been reclaimed from bog and waste. Ignorance has 
given place to science, and barbarous customs of immemo- 
rial strength have been replaced by habits of intelligence 
and of business. In every county the great landowners, 
and very often the smaller, were the great pioneers in a 
process which has transformed the whole face of the 
country. And this process is still in full career. If 1 
mention again my own case, it is because I know it to be 
only a specimen, and that others have been working on a 
still larger scale. During the four years since Mr. George 
did me the honor of sending to me a book assuming that 
landowners are not producers, I find that I have spent on 
one property alone the sum of £40,000 entirely on the 



34 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

improvement of the soil. Moreover, I know that this 
outlay on my own part, and similar outlay on the part of 
my neighbors, so far from having power to absorb and 
concentrate in our hands all other forms of wealth, is 
unable to secure anything like the return which the same 
capital would have won— and won easily— in many other 
kinds of enterprise. I am in possession of authentic 
information that on one great estate in England the outlay 
on improvements purely agricultural has, for twenty-one 
years past, been at the rate of £35,000 a year, while 
including outlay on churches and schools, it has amounted 
in the last forty years to nearly £2,000,000 sterling. To 
such outlays landowners are incited very often, and to a 
great extent, by the mere love of seeing a happier land- 
scape and a more prosperous people. From much of the 
capital so invested they often seek no return at all, and 
from very little of it indeed do they ever get a high rate 
of interest. And yet the whole— every farthing of it- 
goes directly to the public advantage. Production is 
increased in full proportion, although the profit on that 
production is small to the owner. There has been grown 
more corn, more potatoes, more turnips; there has been 
produced more milk, more butter, more cheese, more beef, 
more mutton, more pork, more fowls and eggs, and all 
these articles in direct proportion to their abundance have 
been sold at lower prices to the people. "When a man tells 
me, and argues on steps of logic which he boasts as irre- 
futable, that in all this I and others have been serving no 
interests but our own — nay, more, that we have been but 
making " the poor poorer " than they were — I know very 
well that, whether I can unravel his fallacies or not, he 
is talking the most arrant nonsense, and must have in 
his composition, however ingenious and however eloquent, 
a rich combination and a very large percentage of the 
fanatic and of the goose. 



THE PROPHET OF SAN FEANCISCO. 35 

And here, again, we have a new indication of these 
elements in one great assumption of fact, and that is the 
assumption that wealth has been becoming less and less 
diffused— "the rich richer, the poor poorer.'^ It did not 
require the recent elaborate and able statistical examina- 
tion of Mr. Giffen to convince me that this assumption is 
altogether false. It is impossible for any man to have 
been a considerable employer of labor during a period 
embracing one full generation, without his seeing and 
feeling abundant evidence that all classes have partaken 
in the progress of the country, and no class more exten- 
sively than that which lives by labor. He must know 
that wages have more than doubled— sometimes a great 
deal more— while the continuous remission of taxes has 
tended to make, and has actually made almost every article 
of subsistence a great deal cheaper than it was thirty years 
ago. And outside the province of mere muscular labor, 
among all the classes who are concerned in the work of 
distribution or of manufacture, I have seen around me, 
and on my own property, the enormous increase of those 
whose incomes must be comfortable without being large. 
The houses that are built for their weeks of rest and 
leisure, the furniture with which these houses are provided, 
the gardens and shrubberies which are planted for the 
ornament of them ; all of these indications, and a thousand 
more, teU of increasing comfort far more widely if not 
universally diffused. 

And if personal experience enables me to contradict 
absolutely one of Mr. George's assumptions, official experi- 
ence enables me not less certainly to contradict another. 
Personally I know what private ownership has done for 
one country. Officially I have had only too good cause 
to know what State ownership has not done for another 
country. India is a country in which, theoretically at 
least, the State is the only and the universal landowner, 



36 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

and over a large part of it the State does actually take to 
itself a share of the gross produce which fully represents 
ordinary rent. Yet this is the very country in which the 
poverty of the masses is so abject that millions live only 
from hand to mouth, and when there is any — even a 
partial— failure of the crops, thousands and hundreds of 
thousands are in danger of actual starvation. The Indian 
Government is not corrupt — whatever other failings it 
may have — and the rents of a vast territory can be far 
more safe if left to its disposal than they could be left at 
the disposal of such popular Governments as those which 
Mr. George has denounced on the American Continent. 
Yet somehow the functions and duties which in more 
civilized countries are discharged by the institution of 
private ownership in land are not as adequately discharged 
by the Indian Administration. Moreover, I could not fail 
to observe, when I was connected with the Government of 
India, that the portion of that country which has most 
grown in wealth is precisely that part of it in which the 
Government has parted with its power of absorbing rent 
by having agreed to a Permanent Settlement. Many 
Anglo-Indian statesmen have looked with envious eyes 
at the wealth which has been developed in Lower Bengal, 
and have mourned over the pohcy by which the State has 
been withheld from taking it into the hands of Govern- 
ment. There are two questions, however, which have 
always occurred to me when this mourning has been 
expressed — the first is whether we are quite sure that the 
wealth of Lower Bengal would ever have arisen if its 
sources had not been thus protected ; and the second is 
whether even now it is quite certain that any Govern- 
ments, even the best, spend wealth better for the public 
interests than those to whom it belongs by the natural 
processes of acquisition. These questions have never, I 
think, been adequately considered. But whatever may be 



THE PROPHET OF SAN FEANCISCO. 37 

the true answer to either of them, there is at least one 
question on which all English statesmen have been unan- 
imous—and that is, that promises once given by the 
Government, however long ago, must be absolutely kept. 
When landed property has been bought and sold and 
inherited in Bengal for some three generations— since 
1793— under the guaranty of the Government that the 
Rent Tax upon it is to remain at a fixed amount, no public 
man, so far as I know, has ever suggested that the public 
faith should be violated. And not only so, but there has 
been a disposition even to put upon the engagement of 
the Government an overstrained interpretation, and to 
claim for the landowners who are protected under it an 
immunity from all other taxes affecting the same sources 
of income. As Secretary of State for India I had to deal 
with this question along with my colleagues in the Indian 
Council, and the result we arrived at was embodied in a 
despatch which laid down the principles applicable to 
the case so clearly that in India it appears to have been 
accepted as conclusive. The Land Tax was a special 
impost upon rent. The promise was that this special 
impost should never be increased ; or, in its own words, 
that there should be no ''augmentation of the public 
assessment in consequence of the improvement of their 
estates." It was not a promise that no other taxes should 
ever be raised affecting the same sources of income, pro- 
vided such taxes were not special, but affected all other 
sources of income equally. On this interpretation the 
growing wealth of Bengal accruing under the Permanent 
Settlement would remain accessible to taxation along with 
the growing wealth derived from aU other kinds of prop- 
erty, but not otherwise. There was to be no confiscation 
by the State of the increased value of land, any more than 
of the increased value of other kinds of property, on the 
pretext that this increase was unearned. On the other 



38 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

hand, the State did not exempt that increased value from 
any taxation which might be levied also and equally from 
all the rest of the community. In this way we reconciled 
and established two great principles which to short-sighted 
theorists may seem antagonistic. One of these principles 
is that it is the interest of every community to give equal 
and absolute security to every one of its members in his 
pursuit of wealth ; the other is that when the public inter- 
ests demand a public revenue all forms of wealth should 
be equally accessible to taxation. 

It would have saved us all, both in London and in 
Calcutta, much anxious and careful reasoning if we could 
only have persuaded ourselves that the Government of 
1793 could not possibly bind the Government of 1870. 
It would have given us a still wider margin if we had been 
able to believe that no faith can be pledged to landowners, 
and that we had a divine right to seize not only all the 
wealth of the Zemindars of Bengal, but also all the 
property derived from the same source which had grown 
up since 1793, and has now become distributed and 
absorbed among a great number of intermediate sharers, 
standing between the actual cultivator and the representa- 
tives of those to whom the promise was originally given. 
But one doctrine has been tenaciously held by the " stupid 
English people" in the government of their Eastern 
Empire, and that is, that our honor is the greatest of our 
possessions, and that absolute trust in that honor is one 
of the strongest foundations of our power. 

In this paper it has not been my aim to argue. A 
simple record and exposure of a few of the results arrived 
at by Mr. Henry George, has been all that I intended to 
accomplish. To see what are the practical consequences 
of any train of reasoning is so much gained. And there 
are cases in which this gain is everything. In mathe- 
matical reasoning the " reduction to absurdity " is one of 



THE PEOPHET OF SAN FRANCISCO. 39 

the most familiar methods of disproof. In political rea- 
soning tlie " reduction to iniquity " ought to be of equal 
value. And if it is not found to bo so with all minds, 
this is because of a peculiarity in human character which 
is the secret of all its corruption, and of the most dreadful 
forms in which that corruption has been exhibited. In 
pursuing another investigation I have lately had occasion 
to observe upon the contrast which, in this respect, exists 
between our moral and our purely intellectual faculties.* 
Our Reason is so constituted in respect to certain funda- 
mental truths that those truths are intuitively perceived, 
and any rejection of them is at once seen to be absurd. 
But in the far higher sphere of Morals and Religion, it 
would seem that we have no equally secure moorings to 
duty and to truth. There is no consequence, however 
hideous or cruel its application may be, that men have 
been prevented from accepting because of such hideous- 
ness or of such cruelty. Nothing, however shocking, is 
quite sure to shock them. If it follows from some false 
belief, or from some fallacious verbal proposition, they 
wiU entertain it, and sometimes wiU even rejoice in it 
with a savage fanaticism. It is a fact that none of us 
should ever forget that the moral faculties of Man do not 
as certainly revolt against iniquity as his reasoning facul- 
ties do revolt against absurdity. All history is crowded 
with illustrations of this distinction, and it is the only 
explanation of a thousand horrors. There has seldom 
been such a curious example as the immoral teachings of 
Mr. Henry George. Here we have a man who probably 
sincerely thinks he is a Christian, and who sets up as a 
philosopher, but who is not the least shocked by conse- 
quences which abolish the Decalogue, and deny the pri- 
mary obligations both of public and of private honor. This 

* "Unity of Nature," Chapter X., pp. 440-445. 



40 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

is a very curious phenomenon, and well deserving of some 
closer investigation. What are the erroneous data— what 
are the abstract propositions — which so overpower the 
Moral Sense, and coming from the sphere of Speculation 
dictate such flagitious recommendations in the sphere of 
Conduct? To this question I may perhaps return, not 
with exclusive reference to the writings of one man, but 
with reference to the writings of many others who have 
tried to reduce to scientific form the laws which govern 
the social developments of our race, and who in doing so 
have forgotten— strangely forgotten — some of the most 
fundamental facts of Nature. 



n. 

THE '^EEDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 

BY HENRY GEORGE. 

" XN this paper it has not "been my aim to argue/' says 
1 the Duke of Argyll, in concluding his article entitled 
" The Prophet of San Francisco." It is generally waste 
of time to reply to those who do not argue. Yet, partly 
because of my respect for other writings of his, and partly 
because of the ground to which he invites me, I take the 
first opportunity I have had to reply to the Duke. 

In doing so, let me explain the personal incident to 
which he refers, and which he has seemingly misunder- 
stood. In sending the Duke of Argyll a copy of " Prog- 
ress and Poverty," I intended no impertinence, and was 
unconscious of any impropriety. Instead, I paid him a 
high compliment. For, as I stated in an accompanying 
note, I sent him my book not only to mark my esteem for 
the author of " The Reign of Law," but because I thought 
him a man superior to his accidents. 

I am still conscious of the profit I derived from '^ The 
Reign of Law," and can still recall the pleasure it gave 
me. What attracted me, however, was not, as the Duke 
seems to think, what he styles his "nonsense chapter." 
On the contrary, the notion that it is necessary to impose 
restrictions upon labor seems to me strangely incongruous, 
not only with free trade, but with the idea of the domi- 



42 PEOPEETY IN LAND. 

nance and harmony of natural laws, wMch. in preceding 
chapters he so well develops. Where such restrictions as 
Factory Acts seem needed in the interests of labor, the 
seeming need, to my mind, arises from previous restric- 
tions, in the removal of which, and not in further restric- 
tions, the true remedy is to be sought. What attracted 
me in '' The Reign of Law" was the manner in which the 
Duke points out the existence of physical laws and adapta- 
tions which compel the mind that thinks upon them to 
the recognition of creative purpose. In this way the 
Duke's book was to me useful and grateful, as I doubt 
not it has been to many others. 

My book, I thought, might, in return, be useful and 
grateful to the Duke— might give him something of that 
'immense and instinctive pleasure" of which he had 
spoken as arising from the recognition of the grand 
simplicity and unspeakable harmony of universal law. 
And in the domain in which I had, as I believed, done 
something to point out the reign of law this pleasure is 
perhaps even more intense than in that of which he had 
written. For in physical laws we recognize only intelli- 
gence, and can but trust that infinite wisdom implies 
infinite goodness. But in social laws he who looks may 
recognize beneficence as well as intelligence ; may see that 
the moral perceptions of men are perceptions of realities ; 
and find ground for an abiding faith that this short life 
does not bound the destiny of the human soul. I knew 
the Duke of Argyll then only by his book. I had never 
been in Scotland, or learned the character as a landlord 
he bears there. I intended to pay a tribute and give a 
pleasure to a citizen of the republic of letters, not to 
irritate a landowner. I did not think a trumpery title 
and a patch of ground could fetter a mind that had com- 
muned with Nature and busied itself with causes and 
beginnings. My mistake was that of ignorance. Since 



THE "REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 43 

the Duke of Argyll has publicly called attention to it, I 
thus publicly apologize. 

The Duke declares it has not been his aim to argue. 
This is clear. I wish it were as clear it had not been his 
aim to misrepresent. He seems to have written for those 
who have never read the books he criticizes. But as those 
who have done so constitute a very respectable part of 
the reading world, I can leave his misrepresentations to 
take care of themselves, confident that the incredible 
absurdity he attributes to my reasonings will be seen, by 
whoever reads my books, to belong really to the Duke's 
distortions. In what I have here to say I prefer to meet 
him upon his own ground and to hold to the main ques- 
tion.* I accept the '^ reduction to iniquity." 

Strangely enough, the Duke expresses distrust of the 
very tribunal to which he appeals. '' It is a fact/' he tells 
us, " that none of us should ever forget, that the moral 
faculties do not as certainly revolt against iniquity as the 
reasoning faculties do against absurdity." If that be the 
case, why, then, may I ask, is the Duke's whole article 
addressed to the moral faculties f Why does he talk about 
right and wrong, about justice and injustice, about honor 
and dishonor ; about my '^ immoral doctrines " and " prof- 
ligate conclusions," ''the unutterable meanness of the 
gigantic villainy" I advocate? why style me ''such a 
Preacher of Unrighteousness as the world has never seen," 
and so on ? If the Duke wiU permit me I will tell him, 
for in all probability he does not know— he himself, to 
paraphrase his own words, being a good example of how 
men who sometimes set up as philosophers and deny laws 

* It is uimecessary for me to say anytMng of India further than 
to remark that the essence of nationalization of land is not in the 
collection of rent by government, but in its utilization for the benefit 
of the people. Nor on the subject of public debts is it worth while 
here to add anything to what I have said in "Social Problems." 



44 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

of the human mind are themselves unconsciously subject 
to those very laws. The Duke appeals to moral percep- 
tions for the same reason that impels aU men, good or 
bad, learned or simple, to appeal to moral perceptions 
whenever they become warm in argument 5 and this reason 
is, the instinctive feeling that the moral sense is higher 
and truer than the intellectual sense; that the moral 
faculties do more certainly revolt against iniquity than 
the intellectual faculties against absurdity. The Duke 
appeals to the moral sense, because he instinctively feels 
that with aU men its decisions have the highest sanction ; 
and if he afterward seeks to weaken its authority, it is 
because this very moral sense whispers to him that his 
case is not a good one. 

My opinion as to the relative superiority of the moral 
and intellectual perceptions is the reverse of that stated 
by the Duke. It seems to me certain that the moral facul- 
ties constitute a truer guide than the intellectual faculties, 
and that what, in reality, we should never forget, is not 
that the moral faculties are untrustworthy, but that those 
faculties may be dulled by refusal to heed them, and 
distorted by the promptings of selfishness. So true, so 
ineradicable is the moral sense, that where selfishness or 
passion would outrage it, the intellectual faculties are 
always called upon to supply excuse. No unjust war was 
ever begun without some pretense of asserting right or 
redressing wrong, or, despite themselves, of doing some 
good to the conquered. No petty thief but makes for 
himself some justification. It is doubtful if any deliberate 
wrong is ever committed, it is certain no wrongful course 
of action is ever continued, without the framing of some 
theory which may duU or placate the moral sense. 

And while as to things apprehended solely by the intel- 
lectual faculties the greatest diversities of perception have 
obtained and still obtain among men, and those percep- 



THE "REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 45 

tions constantly change with the growth of knowledge, 
there is a striking consensus of moral perceptions. In 
all stages of social development, and under all forms of 
religion, no matter how distorted by selfish motives and 
intellectual perversions, truth, justice, and benevolence 
have ever been esteemed, and all our intellectual progress 
has given us no higher moral ideals than have obtained 
among primitive peoples. The very distortions of the 
moral sense, the apparent differences in the moral stan- 
dards of different times and peoples, do but show essential 
unity. Wherever moral perceptions have differed or do 
differ the disturbance may be traced to causes which, 
originating in selfishness and perpetuated by intellectual 
perversions, have distorted or dulled the moral faculty. 
It seems to me that the Creator, whom both the Duke 
of Argyll and myself recognize behind physical and mental 
laws, has not left us to grope our way in darkness, but 
has, indeed, given us a Light by which onr steps may be 
safely guided— a compass by which, in all degrees of 
intellectual development, the way to the highest good 
may be surely traced. But just as the compass by which 
the mariner steers his course over the trackless sea in the 
blackest night, may be disturbed by other attractions, 
tuay be misread or clogged, so is it with the moral sense. 
This evidently is not a world in which men must be 
either wise or good, but a world in which they may bring 
about good or evil as they use the faculties given them. 

I speak of this because the recognition of the supremacy 
and certainty of the moral faculties seems to me to throw 
light upon problems otherwise dark, rather than because 
it is necessary here, since I admit even more unreservedly 
than the Duke the competence of the tribunal before 
which he cites me. I am wiUing to submit every question 
of political economy to the test of ethics. So far as I can 
see there is no social law which does not conform to moral 



46 PROPEETY IN LAND. 

law, and no social question whicli cannot be determined 
more quickly and certainly by appeal to moral perceptions 
than by appeal to intellectual perceptions. Nor can there 
be any dispute between us as to the issue to be joined. 
He charges me with advocating violation of the moral law 
in proposing robbery. I agree that robbery is a violation 
of the moral law, and is therefore, without further inquiry, 
to be condemned. 

As to what constitutes robbery, it is, we will both agree, 
the taking or withholding from another of that which 
rightfully belongs to him. That which rightfully belongs 
to him, be it observed, not that which legally belongs to 
him. As to what extent human law may create rights is 
beside this discussion, for what I propose is to change, 
not to violate human law. Such change the Duke declares 
would be unrighteous. He thus appeals to that moral law 
which is before and above all human laws, and by which 
all human laws are to be judged. Let me insist upon this 
point. Landholders must elect to try their case either by 
human law or by moral law. If they say that land is 
rightfully property because made so by human law, they 
cannot charge those who would change that law with 
advocating robbery. But if they charge that such change 
in human law would be robbery, then they must show 
that land is rightfully property irrespective of human law. 

For land is not of that species of things to which the 
presumption of rightful property attaches. This does 
attach to things that are properly termed wealth, and that 
are the produce of labor. Such things, in their beginning, 
must have an owner, as they originate in human exertion, 
and the right of property which attaches to them springs 
from the manifest natural right of every individual to 
himself and to the benefit of his own exertions. This is 
the moral basis of property, which makes certain things 
rightfully property totally irrespective of human law. 



THE "REDUCTION TO INIQUITY/' 47 

The EigMh Commandment does not derive its validity 
from human enactment. It is written upon the facts of 
nature and self-evident to the perceptions of men. If 
there were but two men in the world, the fish which either 
of them took from the sea, the beast which he captured 
in the chase, the fruit which he gathered, or the hut which 
he erected, would be his rightful property, which the other 
could not take from him without violation of the moral 
law. But how could either of them claim the world as 
his rightful property? Or if they agreed to divide the 
world between them, what moral right could their compact 
give as against the next man who came into the world ? 

It is needless, however, to insist that property in land 
rests only on human enactment, which may, at any time, 
be changed without violation of moral law. No one seri- 
ously asserts any other derivation. It is sometimes said 
that property in land is derived from appropriation. But 
those who say this do not reaUy mean it. Appropriation 
can give no right. The man who raises a cupful of water 
from a river, acquires a right to that cupful, and no one 
may rightfully snatch it from his hand ; but this right is 
derived from labor, not from appropriation. How could 
he acquire a right to the river, by merely appropriating 
it? Columbus did not dream of appropriating the New 
World to himself and his heirs, and would have been 
deemed a lunatic had he done so. Nations and princes 
divided America between them, but by " right of strength." 
This, and this alone, it is that gives any validity to appro- 
priation. And this, evidently, is what they reaUy mean 
who talk of the right given by appropriation. 

This " right of conquest," this power of the strong, is 
the only basis of property in land to which the Duke ven- 
tures to refer. He does so in asking whether the exclusive 
right of ownership to the territory of California, which, 
according to him, I attribute to the existing people of 



48 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

California, does not rest upon conquest, and "if so, may 
it not be as rightfully acquired by any who are strong 
enough to seize it?" To this I reply in the affirmative. 
If exclusive ownership is conferred by conquest, then, not 
merely, as the Duke says, has it " been open to every con- 
quering army and every occupying host in all ages and 
in all countries of the world to establish a similar owner- 
ship ; " but it is now open, and whenever the masses of 
Scotland, who have the power, choose to take from the 
Duke the estates he now holds, he cannot, if this be the 
basis of his claim, consistently complain. 

But I have never, admitted that conquest or any other 
exertion of force can give right. Nor have I ever asserted, 
but on the contrary have expressly denied, that the present 
population of California, or any other country, have any 
exclusive right of ownership in the soil, or can in any 
way acquire such a right. I hold that the present, the 
past, or the future population of California, or of any 
other country, have not, have not had, and cannot have, 
^ny right save to the use of the soil, and that as to this 
their rights are equal. I hold with Thomas Jefferson, 
that " the earth belongs in usufruct to the living, and that 
the dead have no power or right over it." I hold that the 
land was not created for one generation to dispose of, but 
as a dwelHng-place for all generations ; that the men of 
the present are not bound by any grants of land the men 
of the past may have made, and cannot grant away the 
rights of the men of the future. I hold that if all the 
people of California, or any other country, were to unite 
in any disposition of the land which ignored the equal 
right of one of their number, they would be doing a 
wrong 5 and that even if they could grant away their own 
rights, they are powerless to impair the natural rights of 
their children. And it is for this reason that I hold that 
the titles to the ownership of land which the government 



THE ''REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 49 

of the United States is now granting are of no greater 
moral validity than the land titles of the British Isles, 
which rest historically upon the forcible spoliation of the 
masses. 

How ownership of land was acquired in the past can 
have no bearing upon the question of how we should treat 
land now ; yet the inquiry is interesting, as showing the 
nature of the institution. The Duke of Argyll has written 
a great deal about the rights of landowners, but has never, 
I think, told us anythiag of the historical derivation of 
these rights. He has spoken of his own estates, but has 
nowhere told us how they came to be his estates. This, 
I know, is a delicate 'question, and on that account I will, 
not press it. But while a man ought not to be taunted 
with the sins of his ancestors, neither ought he to profit 
by them. And the general fact is, that the exclusive 
ownership of land has everywhere had its beginnings in 
force and fraud, in selfish greed and unscrupulous cun- 
ning. It originated, as all evil institutions originate, in 
the bad passions of men, not in their perceptions of what 
is right or their experience of what is wise. '^ Human 
laws," the Duke tells us, "are evolved out of human 
instincts, and in direct proportion as the accepted ideas 
on which they rest are really universal, in that same pro- 
portion have they a claim to be regarded as really natural, 
and as the legitimate expression of fundamental truths." 
If he would thus found on the wide-spread existence of 
exclusive property in land an argument for its righteous- 
ness, what, may I ask him, wiU he say to the much stronger 
argument that might thus be made for the righteousness 
of polygamy or chattel slavery ? But it is a fact, of which 
I need hardly more than remind him, though less well- 
informed people may be ignorant of it, that the treatment 
of land as individual propertj^ is comparatively recent, 
and by at least nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every 



50 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

thousand of those who have lived on this world, has never 
been dreamed of. It is only within the last two centuries 
that it has, by the abolition of feudal tenures, and the 
suppression of tribal customs, fully obtained among our 
own people. In fact, even among us it has hardly yet 
reached full development. For not only are we still 
spreading over land yet unreduced to individual owner- 
ship, but in the fragments of common rights which yet 
remain in Great Britain, as well as in laws and customs, 
are there survivals of the older system. The first and 
universal perception of mankind is that declared by the 
American Indian Chief, Black Hawk : "The Great Spirit 
has told me that land is not to be made property like 
other property. The earth is our mother!" And this 
primitive perception of the right of all men to the use of 
the soil from which all must live, has never been obscured 
save by a long course of usurpation and oppression. 

But it is needless for me to discuss such questions with 
the Duke. There is higher ground on which we may meet. 
He believes in an intelligent Creator 5 he sees in Nature 
contrivance and intent ; he realizes that it is only by con- 
forming his actions to universal law that man can master 
his conditions and fulfil his destiny. 

Let me, then, ask the Duke to look around him in the 
richest country of the world, where art, science, and the 
power that comes from the utilization of physical laws have 
been carried to the highest point yet attained, and note 
how few of this population can avail themselves fully of 
the advantages of civilization. Among the masses the 
struggle for existence is so intense that the Duke himself 
declares it necessary by law to restrain parents from 
working their children to disease and death ! 

Let him consider the conditions of life involved in such 
facts as this— conditions, alas, obvious on every side, and 



THE ^'EEDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 51 

then ask himself whether this is in accordance with the 
intent of Nature ? 

The Duke of Argyll has explained to me in his " Reign 
of Law" with what nice adaptations the feathers on a 
bird's wing are designed to give it the power of flight ; he 
has told me that the claw on the wing of a bat is intended 
for it to climb by. Will he let me ask him to look in the 
same way at the human beings around him? Consider, 
O Duke ! the little children growing up in city slums, 
toiling in mines, working in noisome rooms 5 the young 
girls chained to machinery all day or walking the streets 
by night ; the women bending over forges in the Black 
Country or turned into beasts of burden in the Scottish 
Highlands -, the men who all life long must spend life's 
energies in the effort to maintain life ! Consider them 
as you have considered the bat and the bird. If the hook 
of the bat be intended to climb by and the wing of the 
bird be intended to fly by, with what intent have human 
creatures been given capabilities of body and mind which 
under conditions that exist in such countries as Great 
Britain only a few of them can use and enjoy ? 

They who see in Nature no evidences of conscious, 
planning intelligence may think that all this is as it must 
be; but who that recognizes in his works an infinitely 
wise Creator can for a moment hesitate to infer that the 
wide difference between obvious intent and actual accom- 
plishment is due, not to the clash of natural laws, but to 
our ignoring them ? Nor need we go far to confirm this 
inference. The moment we consider in the largest way 
what kind of an animal man is, we see in the most important 
of social adjustments a violation of Nature's intent sufficient 
to account for want and misery and aborted development. 

Given a ship sent to sea with abundant provisions for 
all her company. What must happen if some of that 



52 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

company take possession of the provisions and deny to 
the rest any share ? 

Given a world so made and ordered that intelligent 
beings placed upon it may draw from its substance an 
abundant supply for all physical needs. Must there not 
be want and misery in such a world if some of those 
beings make its surface and substance their exclusive 
property and deny the right of the others to its use ? Here, 
as on any other world we can conceive of, two and two 
make four, and when all is taken from anything nothing 
remains. What we see clearly would happen on any other 
world, does happen on this. 

The Duke sees intent in Nature. So do I. That which 
conforms to this intent is natural, wise, and righteous. 
That which contravenes it is unnatural, foolish, and iniqui- 
tous. In this we agree. Let us then bring to this test 
the institution which I arraign and he defends. 

Place, stripped of clothes, a landowner's baby among 
a dozen workhouse babies, and who that you call in can 
tell the one from the others? Is the human law which 
declares the one born to the possession of a hundred thou- 
sand acres of land, while the others have no right to a 
single square inch, conformable to the intent of Nature or 
not? Is it, judged by this appeal, na ural or unnatural, 
wise or foolish, righteous or iniquitous ? Put the bodies 
of a duke and a peasant on a dissecting-table, and bring, 
if you can, the surgeon who, by laying bare the brain or 
examining the viscera, can tell which is duke and which 
is peasant 1 Are not both land animals of the same kind, 
with like organs and like needs ? Is it not evidently the 
intent of Nature that both shall live on land and use land 
in the same way and to the same degree ? Is there not, 
therefore, a violation of the intent of Nature in human 
laws which give to one more land than he can possibly 
use, and deny any land to the other ? 



THE '^ REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 53 

Let me ask the Duke to consider, from the point of 
view of an observer of Nature, a landless man— a being 
fitted in all his parts and powers for the use of land, 
compelled by all his needs to the use of land, and yet 
denied all right to land. Is he not as unna,tural as a bird 
without air, a fish without water? And can anything 
more clearly violate the intent of Nature than the human 
laws which produce such anomalies ? 

I call upon the Duke to observe that what Nature 
teaches us is not merely that men wey'e equally intended 
to live on land, and to use land, and therefore had origi- 
nally equal rights to land, but that they are now equally 
intended to live on and use land, and, therefore, that 
present rights to land are equal. It is said that fish 
deprived of light will, in the course of generations, lose 
their eyes, and, within certain narrow limits, it is certain 
that Nature does conform some of her living creatures to 
conditions imposed by man. In such cases the intent of 
Nature may be said to have conformed to that of man, or 
rather to embrace that of man. But there is no such con- 
forming in this case. The intent of Nature, that all human 
beings should use land, is as clearly seen in the children 
born to-day as it could have been seen in any past genera- 
tion. How foolish, then, are those who say that although 
the right to land was originally equal, this equality of 
right has been lost by the action or sufferance of inter- 
mediate generations ! How illogical those who declare 
that, while it would be just to assert this equality of right 
in the laws of a new country where people are now coming 
to live, it would be unjust to conform to it the laws of a 
country where people long have lived ! Has Nature any- 
where or in anything shown any disposition to conform 
to what we call vested interests? Does the child born 
in an old country differ from the child born in a ne"W 
country ? 



54 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

Moral right and wrong, the Dnke must agree with me, 
are not matters of precedent. The repetition of a wrong 
may dull the moral sense, but will not make it right. A 
robbery is no less a robbery the thousand-millioDth time 
it is committed than it was the first time. This they forgot 
who declaring the slave-trade piracy still legalized the 
enslavement of those already enslaved. This they forget 
who admitting the equality of natural rights to the soil 
declare that it would be unjust now to assert them. For, 
as the keeping of a man in slavery is as much a violation 
of natural right as the seizure of his remote ancestor, so 
is the robbery involved in the present denial of natural 
rights to the soil as much a robbery as was the first act 
of fraud or force which violated those rights. Those who 
say it would be unjust for the people to resume their 
natural rights in the land without compensating present 
holders, confound right and wrong as flagrantly as did 
they who held it a crime in the slave to run away without 
first paying his owner his market value. They have never 
formed a clear idea of what property in land means. It 
means not merely a continuous exclusion of some people 
from the element which it is plainly the intent of Nature 
that all should enjoy, but it involves a continuous confis- 
cation of labor and the results of labor. The Duke of 
Argyll has, we say, a large income drawn from land. But 
is this income really drawn from land? "Were there no 
men on his land what income could the Duke get from it, 
save such as his own hands produced? Precisely as if 
drawn from slaves, this income represents an appropria- 
tion of the earnings of labor. The effect of permitting 
the Duke to treat this land as his property, is to make so 
many other Scotsmen, in whole or in part, his serfs— to 
compel them to labor for him without pay, or to enable 
him to take from them their earnings without return. 
Surely, if the Duke will look at the matter in this way, he 



THE "REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 55 

must see that the iniquity is not in abolishing an institu- 
tion which permits one man to plunder others, but in con- 
tinuing it. He must see that any claim of landowners to 
compensation is not a claim to payment for what they 
have previously taken, but to payment for what they 
might yet take, precisely as would be the claim of the 
slaveholder— the true character of which appears in the 
fact that he would demand more compensation for a strong 
slave, out of whom he might yet get much work, than for 
a decrepit one, out of whom he had already forced nearly 
all the labor he could yield. 

In assuming that denial of the justice of property in 
land is the prelude to an attack upon all rights of property, 
the Duke ignores the essential distinction between land 
and things rightfully property. The things which con- 
stitute wealth, or capital (which is wealth used in produc- 
tion), and to which the right of property justly attaches, 
are produced by human exertion. Their substance is 
matter, which existed before man, and which man can 
neither create nor destroy ; but their essence— that which 
gives them the character of wealth — is labor impressed 
upon or modifying the conditions of matter. Their exis- 
tence is due to the physical exertion of man, and, like his 
physical frame, they tend constantly to return again to 
Nature's reservoirs of matter and force. Land, on the 
contrary, is that part of the external universe on which 
and from which alone man can live; that reservoir of 
matter and force on which he must draw for all his needs. 
Its existence is not due to man, but is referable only to 
that Power from which man himself proceeds. It con- 
tinues while he comes and goes, and will continue, so far 
as we can see, after he and his works shaU disappear. 
Both species of things have value, but the value of the 
one species depends upon the amount of labor required 
for their production; the value of the other upon the 



56 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

power whieh its reduction to ownersMp gives of com- 
manding labor or the results of labor without paying any 
equivalent. The recognition of the right of property in 
wealth, or things produced by labor, is thus but a recog- 
nition of the right of each human being to himself and 
to the results of his own exertions ; but the recognition of 
a similar right of property in land is necessarily the 
impairment and denial of this true right of property. 

Turn from principles to facts. Whether as to national 
strength or national character, whether as to the number 
of people or as to their physical and moral health, whether 
as to the production of wealth or as to its equitable dis- 
tribution, the fruits of the primary injustice involved in 
making the land, on which and from which a whole people 
must live, the property of but a portion of their number, 
are everywhere evil and nothing but evil. 

If this seems to any too strong a statement, it is only 
because they associate individual ownership of land with 
permanence of possession and security of improvements. 
These are necessary to the proper use of land, but so far 
from "being dependent upon individual ownership of land, 
they can be secured without it in greater degree than 
with it. This will be evident upon reflection. That the 
existing system does not secure permanence of possession 
and security of improvements in anything like the degree 
necessary to the best use of land, is obvious everywhere, 
but especially obvious in Great Britain, where the owners 
of land and the users of land are for the most part distinct 
persons. In many cases the users of land have no security 
from year to year, a logical development of individual 
ownership in land so flagrantly unjust to the user and so 
manifestly detrimental to the community, that in Ireland, 
where this system most largely prevailed, it has been 
deemed necessary for the State to interfere in the most 
arbitrary manner. In other cases, where land is let for 



THE '' REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 57 

years, the user is often hampered with restrictions that 
prevent improvement and interfere with use, and at the 
expiration of the lease he is not merely deprived of his 
improvements, but is frequently subjected to a blackmail 
calculated upon the inconvenience and loss which removal 
would cost him. Wherever I have been in Great Britain, 
from Land's End to John O'Groat's, and from Liverpool 
to Hull, I have heard of improvements prevented and 
production curtailed from this cause— in instances which 
run from the prevention of the building of an outhouse, 
the painting of a dwelling, the enlargement of a chapel, 
the widening of a street, or the excavation of a dock, to 
the shutting up of a mine, the demolition of a village, the 
tearing up of a railway track, or the turning of land from 
the support of men to the breeding of wild beasts. I 
could cite case after case, each typical of a class, but it 
is unnecessary. How largely use and improvement are 
restricted and prevented by private ownership of land 
may be appreciated only by a few, but specific cases are 
known to all. How insecurity of improvement and pos- 
session prevents the proper maintenance of dwellings in 
the cities, how it hampers the farmer, how it fills the 
shopkeeper with dread as the expiration of his lease draws 
nigh, have been, to some extent at least, brought out by 
recent discussions, and in all these directions propositions 
are being made for State interference more or less violent, 
arbitrary, and destructive of the sound principle that men 
should be left free to manage their own property as they 
deem best. 

Does not all this interference and demand for interfer- 
ence show that private property in land does not produce 
good results, that it does not give the necessary perma- 
nence of possession and security of improvements I Is 
not an institution that needs such tinkering fundamentally 
wrong ? That property in land must have different treat- 



58 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

ment from other property, all, or nearly aU, are now 
agreed. Does not this prove that land ought not to be 
made individual property at all; that to treat it as indi- 
vidual property is to weaken and endanger the true rights 
of property 1 

The Duke of Argyll asserts that in the United States 
we have made land private property because we have 
found it necessary to secure settlement and improvement. 
Nothing could be further from the truth. The Duke 
might as well urge that our protective tariff is a proof of 
the necessity of " protection." We have made land private 
property because we are but transplanted Europeans, 
wedded to custom, and have followed it in this matter 
more readily, because in a new country the evils that at 
length spring from private property in land are less obvi- 
ous, while a much larger portion of the people seemingly 
profit by it— those on the ground gaining at the expense 
of those who come afterward. But so far from this 
treatment of land in the United States having promoted 
settlement and reclamation, the very reverse is true. 
Wliat it has promoted is the scattering of population in 
the country and its undue concentration in cities, to the 
disadvantage of production and the lessening of comfort. 
It has forced into the wilderness families for whom there 
was plenty of room in well-settled neighborhoods, and 
raised tenement-houses amid vacant lots, led to waste of 
labor and capital in roads and railways not really needed, 
locked up natural opportunities that otherwise would have 
been improved, made tramps and idlers of men who, had 
they found it in time, would gladly have been at work, 
and given to our agriculture a character that is rapidly 
and steadily decreasing the productiveness of the soil. 

As to political corruption in the United States, of which 
I have spoken in "Social Problems," and to which the 
Duke refers, it springs, as I have shown in that book, not 



THE ^'BEDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 59 

from excess but from deficiency of democracy, and mainly 
from our failure to recognize the equality of natural rights 
as well as of political rights. In comparing the two coun- 
tries, it may be well to note that the exposure of abuses 
is quicker and sharper in the United States than in Eng- 
land, and that to some extent abuses which in the one 
country appear in naked deformity, are in the other 
hidden by the ivy of custom and respectability. But be 
this as it may, the reforms I propose, instead of adding 
to corruptive forces, would destroy prolific sources of cor- 
ruption. Our "protective" tariff, our excise taxes, and 
demoralizing system of local taxation, would, in their 
direct and indirect effects, corrupt any government, even 
if not aided by the corrupting effects of the grabbing for 
public lands. But the first step I propose would sweep 
away these corruptive influences, and it is to governments 
thus reformed, in a state of society in which the reckless 
struggle for wealth would be lessened by the elimination 
of the fear of want, that I would give, not the manage- 
ment of land or the direction of enterprise, but the 
administration of the funds arising from the appropria- 
tion of economic rent. 

The Duke styles me a Pessimist. But, however pessi- 
mistic I may be as to present social tendencies, I have a 
firm faith in human nature. I am convinced that the 
attainment of pure government is merely a matter of 
conforming social institutions to moral law. If we do 
this, there is, to my mind, no reason why in the proper 
sphere of public administration we should not find men 
as honest and as faithful as when acting in private capa- 
cities. 

But to return to the " reduction to iniquity." Test the 
institution of private property in land by its fruits in any 
country where it exists. Take Scotland. What, there, 
are its results ? That wild beasts have supplanted human 



60 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

beings j that glens which once sent forth their thousand 
fighting men are now tenanted by a couple of game- 
keepers ; that there is destitution and degradation that 
would shame savages ; that little children are stunted and 
starved for want of proper nourishment ; that women are 
compelled to do the work of animals; that young girls 
who ought to be fitting themselves for wifehood and 
motherhood are held to the monotonous toil of factories, 
while others, whose fate is sadder still, prowl the streets ; 
that while a few Scotsmen have castles and palaces, more 
than a third of Scottish families live in one room each, 
and more than two-thirds in not more than two rooms 
each; that thousands of acres are kept as playgrounds 
for strangers, while the masses have not enough of their 
native soil to grow a flower, are shut out even from moor 
and mountain; dare not take a trout from a loch or a 
salmon from the sea ! 

If the Duke thinks all classes have gained by the advance 
in civilization, let him go into the huts of the Highlands. 
There he may find countrymen of his, men and women 
the equals in natural ability and in moral character of any 
peer or peeress in the land, to whom the advance of our 
wondrous age has brought no gain. He may find them 
tilling the ground with the crooked spade, cutting grain 
with the sickle, threshing it with the flail, winnowing it 
by tossing it in the air, grinding it as their forefathers 
did a thousand yearp ago. He may see spinning-wheel 
and distaff yet in use, and the smoke from the fire in the 
center of the hut ascending as it can through the thatch, 
that the precious heat, which costs so much labor to pro- 
cure, may be economized to the utmost. These human 
beings are in natural parts and powers just such human 
beings as may be met at a royal levee, at a gathering of 
scientists, or inventors, or captains of industry. That 
they so live and so work, is not because of their stupidity, 



THE ''REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 61 

but because of their poverty —the direct and indisputable 
result of the denial of their natural rights. They have 
not merely been prevented from participating in the 
" general advance/' but are positively worse off than were 
their ancestors before commerce had penetrated the High- 
lands or the modern era of labor-saving inventions had 
begun. They have been driven from the good land to the 
poor land. While their rents have been increased, their 
holdings have been diminished, and their pasturage cut 
off. Where they once had beasts, they cannot now eat a 
chicken or keep a donkey, and their women must do work 
once done by animals. With the same thoughtful atten- 
tion he has given to " the way of an eagle in the air," let 
the Duke consider a sight he must have seen many times 
—a Scottish woman toiling uphill with a load of manure 
on her back. Then let him apply the '' reduction to 
iniquity." 

Let the Duke not be content with feasting his eyes 
upon those comfortable houses of the large farmers which 
so excite his admiration. Let him visit the bothies in 
which farm-servants are herded together like cattle, and 
learn, as he may learn, that the lot of the Scottish farm- 
servant— a lot from which no industry or thrift can release 
him— is to die in the workhouse or in the receipt of a 
parish dole if he be so unfortunate as to outlive his ability 
to work. Or let him visit those poor broken-down crea- 
tures who, enduring everything rather than accept the 
humiliation of the workhouse, are eking out their last 
days upon a few shillings from the parish, supplemented 
by the charity of people nearly as poor as themselves. 
Let him consider them, and if he has imagination enough, 
put himself in their place. Then let him try the " reduc- 
tion to iniquity." 

Let the Duke go to Glasgow, the metropolis of Scotland, 
where, in underground cellars and miserable rooms, he will 



62 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

find crowded together families who (some of them, lest 
they might offend the deer) have been driven from their 
native soil into the great city to compete with each other 
for employment at any price, to have their children 
debauched by daily contact with all that is vile. Let him 
some Saturday evening leave the districts where the richer 
classes live, wander for a while through the streets ten- 
anted by working-people, and note the stunted forms, the 
pinched features. Vice, drunkenness, the recklessness 
that comes when hope goes, he will see too. How should 
not such conditions produce such effects? But he will 
also see, if he chooses to look, hard, brave, stubborn 
struggling— the workman, who, do his best, cannot find 
steady employment ; the breadwinner stricken with illness ; 
the widow straining to keep her children from the work- 
house. Let the Duke observe and reflect upon these 
things, and then apply the '^ reduction to iniquity." 

Or, let him go to Edinburgh, the '' modern Athens," of 
which Scotsmen speak with pride, and in buildings from 
whose roofs a bowman might strike the spu'es of twenty 
churches, he will find human beings living as he would not 
keep his meanest dog. Let him toil up the stairs of one 
of those monstrous buildings, let him enter one of those 
" dark houses," let him close the door, and in the blackness 
think what life must be in such a place. Then let him try 
the "reduction to iniquity." And if he go to that good 
charity (but, alas, how futile is Charity without Justice !) 
where little children are kept while their mothers are at 
work, and children are fed who would otherwise go hungry, 
he may see infants whose limbs are shrunken from want 
of nourishment. Perhaps they may tell him, as they told 
me, of that little girl, barefooted, ragged, and hungry, 
who, when they gave her bread, raised her eyes and 
clasped her hands, and thanked our Father in Heaven 
for his bounty to her. They who told me that never 



THE '' REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 63 

dreamed, I, think, of its terrible meaning. But I ask tke 
Duke of Argyll, did that little child, thankful for that 
poor dole, get what our Father provided for her ? Is he 
so niggard? If not, what is it, who is it, that stands 
between such children and our Father's bounty ? If it be 
an institution, is it not our duty to God and to our neigh- 
bor to rest not till we destroy it ? If it be a man, were it 
not better for him that a millstone were hanged about his 
neck and he were cast into the depths of the sea ? 

There can be no question of overpopulation— no pre- 
tense that Nature has brought more men into being than 
she has made provision for. Scotland surely is not over- 
populated. Much land is unused j much land is devoted 
to lower uses, such as the breeding of game and the 
raising of cattle, that might be devoted to higher uses j 
there are mineral resources untouched ; the wealth drawn 
from the sea is but a small part of what might be drawn. 
But it is idle to argue this point. Neither in Scotland, 
nor in any other country, can any excess of population 
over the power of Nature to provide for them be shown. 
The poverty so painful in Scotland is manifestly no more 
due to overpopulation than the crowding of two-thirds of 
the families into houses of one or two rooms is due to 
want of space to build houses upon. And just as the 
crowding of people into insufficient lodgings is directly 
due to institutions which permit men to hold vacant land 
needed for buildings until they can force a monopoly price 
from those wishing to build, so is the poverty of the 
masses due to the fact that they are in like manner shut 
out from the opportunities Nature has provided for the 
employment of their labor in the satisfaction of their 
wants. 

Take the Island of Skye as illustrating on a small scale 
the cause of poverty throughout Scotland. The people of 
Skye are poor— very poor. Is it because there are too 



64 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

many of them ? An explanation lies nearer— an explana- 
tion which would account for poverty no matter how 
small the population. If there were but one man in Skye, 
and if all that he produced, save enough to give him a 
bare living, were periodically taken from him and carried 
off, he would necessarily be poor. That is the condition 
of the people of Skye. With a population of some seven- 
teen thousand there are, if my memory serves me, twenty- 
four landowners. The few proprietors who live upon the 
island, though they do nothing to produce wealth, have 
fine houses, and live luxuriously, while the greater por- 
tion of the rents are carried off to be spent abroad. It is 
not merely that there is thus a constant drain upon the 
wealth produced ; but that the power of producing wealth 
is enormously lessened. As the people are deprived of 
the power to accumulate capital, production is carried on 
in the most primitive style, and at the greatest disadvan- 
tage. 

If there are really too many people in Scotland, why 
not have the landlords emigrate ? They are not merely 
best fitted to emigrate, but would give the greatest relief. 
They consume most, waste most, carry off most, while they 
produce least. As landlords, in fact, they produce nothing. 
They merely consume and destroy. Economically con- 
sidered, they have the same effect upon production as 
bands of robbers or pirate fleets. To national wealth they 
are as weevils in the grain, as rats in the storehouse, as 
ferrets in the poultry-yard. 

The Duke of Argyll complains of what he calls my 
" assumption that owners of land are not producers, and 
that rent does not represent, or represents in a very minor 
degree, the interest of capital." The Duke will justify his 
complaint if he wiU show how the owning of land can 
produce anything. Failing in this, he must admit that 
though the same person may be a laborer, capitalist, and 



THE "REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 65 

landowner, the owner of land, as an owner of land, is not 
a producer. And surely lie knows that the term ''rent" 
as used in political economy, and as I use it in the books 
he criticizes, never represents the interest on capital, but 
refers alone to the sum paid for the use of the inherent 
capabilities of the soil. 

As illustrating the usefulness of landlords, the Duke 
says : 

My own experience now extends over a period of the best part of 
forty years. During that time I have built more than fifty home- 
steads complete for man and beast ; I have drained and reclaimed 
many hundreds, and inclosed some thousands, of acres. In this sense 
I have "added house to house and field to field,'' not— as pulpit 
orators have assumed in similar cases— that I might "dwell alone in 
the land," but that the cultivating class might live more comfortably, 
and with better appliances for increasing the produce of the soil. 

And again he says that during the last four years he 
has spent on one property £40,000 in the improvement of 
the soil. 

I fear that in Scotland the Duke of Argyll has been 
''hiding his light under a bushel," for his version of the 
way in which he has " added house to house and field to 
field" differs much from that which common Scotsmen 
give. But this is a matter into which I do not wish to 
enter. What I would like to ask the Duke is, how he 
built the fifty homesteads and reclaimed the thousands of 
acres ? Not with his own hands, of course ; but with his 
money. Where, then, did he get that money? Was it 
not taken as rent from the cultivators of the soil ? And 
might not they, had it been left to them, have devoted it 
to the building of homesteads and the improvement of the 
soil as well as he? Suppose the Duke spends on such 
improvements all he draws in rent, minus what it costs 
him to live, is not the cost of his hving so much waste so 
far as the improvement of the land is concerned ? Would 



66 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

there not be a considerably greater fund to devote to this 
purpose if the Duke got no rent, and had to work for a 
living ? 

But all Scottish landholders are not even such improvers 
as the Duke. There are landlords who spend their incomes 
in racing, in profligacy, in doing things which when not 
injurious are quite as useless to man or beast as the 
works of that English Duke, recently dead, who spent 
millions in burrowing underground like a mole. What 
the Scottish landlords call their "improvements" have, 
for the most part, consisted in building castles, laying out 
pleasure-grounds, raising rents, and evicting their kins- 
men. But the encouragement given to agriculture, by 
even such improving owners as the Duke of Argyll, is very 
much like the encouragement given to traffic by the Duke 
of Bedford, who keeps two or three old men and women 
to open and shut gates he has erected across the streets 
of London. That much the greater part of the incomes 
drawn by landlords is as completely lost for all productive 
purposes as though it were thrown into the sea, there can 
be no doubt. But that even the small part which is 
devoted to reproductive improvement is largely wasted, 
the Duke of Argyll himself clearly shows in stating, what 
I have learned from other sources, that the large outlays 
of the great landholders yield little interest, and in many 
cases no interest at all. Clearly, the stock of wealth would 
have been much greater had this capital been left in the 
hands of the cultivators, who, in most cases, suffer from 
lack of capital, and in many cases have to pay the most 
usurious interest. 

In fact, the plea of the landlords that they, as landlords, 
assist in production, is very much like the plea of the 
slaveholders that they gave a living to the slaves. And 
I am convinced that if the Duke of Argyll will consider 
the matter as a philosopher rather than as a landlord, he 



I 



THE ^'EEDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 67 

will see tlie gross inconsistency between tlie views lie 
expresses as to negro slavery and the position lie assumes 
as to property in land- 
In principle the two systems of appropriating the labor 
of other men are essentially the same. Since it is from 
land and on land that man must live, if he is to live at 
all, a human being is as completely enslaved when the 
land on which he must live is made the property of another 
as when his own flesh and blood are made the property 
of that other. And at least, after a certain point in social 
development is reached, the slavery that results from 
depriving men of all legal right to land is, for the very 
reason that the relation between master and slave is not 
so direct and obvious, more cruel and more demoralizing 
than that which makes property of their bodies. 

And turning to facts, the Duke must see, if he will look, 
that the effects of the two systems are substantially the 
same. He is, for instance, an hereditary legislator, with 
power in making laws which other Scotsmen, who have 
little or no voice in making laws, must obey under penalty 
of being fined, imprisoned, or hanged. He has this power, 
which is essentially that of the master to compel the 
slave, not because any one thinks that Nature gives wisdom 
and patriotism to eldest sons more than to younger sons, 
or to some families more than to other families, but 
because as the legal owner of a considerable part of Scot- 
land, he is deemed to have greater rights in making laws 
than other Scotsmen, who can live in their native land 
only by paying some of the legal owners of Scotland for 
the privilege. 

That power over men arises from ownership of land as 
well as from ownership of their bodies the Duke may see 
in varied manifestations if he wiU look. The power of 
the Scottish landlords over even the large farmers, and, in 
the smaller towns, over even the well-to-do shopkeepers 



68 PEOPEETY IN LAND. 

and professional men, is enormous. Even where it is the 
custom to let on lease, and large capital is required, com- 
petition, aided in many cases by the law of hypothec, 
enables the landlord to exert a direct power over even the 
large farmer. That many substantial farmers have been 
driven from their homes and ruined because they voted 
or were supposed to have voted against the wishes of their 
landlords is well known. A man whose reputation was 
that of the best farmer in Scotland * was driven from his 
home in this way a few years since for having politically 
offended his landlord. In Leeds (England) I was told of 
a Scottish physician who died there lately. He had been 
in comfortable practice in a village on the estate of a 
Scottish duke. Because he voted for a Liberal candidate, 
word was given by the landlord's agent that he was no 
longer to be employed, and as the people feared to disobey 
the hint, he was obliged to leave. He came to Leeds,, and 
not succeeding in establishing himself, pined away, and 
would have died in utter destitution but that some friends 
he had made in Leeds wrote to the candidate for support- 
ing whom he had been boycotted, who came to Leeds, 
provided for his few days of life, and assumed the care of 
his children. I mention to his honor the name of that 
gentleman as it was given to me. It was Sir Sydney 
Waterlow. 

During a recent visit to the Highlands I was over and 
over again told by well-to-do men that they did not dare 
to let their opinions be known or to take any action the 
landlords or their agents might dislike. In one townt 
such men came to me by night and asked me to speak, 
but telling me frankly that they did not dare to apply for 
a hall, requested me to do that for myself, as I was beyond 



* John Hope of Fenton Barns, 
t Portree, Isle of Skye. 



THE ''REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.'^ 69 

the tjo'anny they feared. If this be the condition of the 
well-to-do, the condition of the crofters can be imagined. 
One of them said to me, " We have feared the landlord 
more than we have feared God Almighty ; we have feared 
the factor more than the landlord, and the ground officer 
more than the factor." But there is a class lower stilJ 
even than the crofters— the cotters— who, on forty-eight 
hours' notice, can be turned out of what by courtesy are 
called their homes, and who are a;t the mercy of the large 
farmers or tacksmen, who in turn fear the landlord or 
agent. Take this class, or the class of farm-servants who 
are kept in bothies. Can the Duke tell me of any Ameri- 
can slaves who were lodged and fed as these white slaves 
are lodged and fed, or who had less of all the comforts 
and enjoyments of life 1 

The slaveholders of the South never, in any case that I 
have heard of, interfered with the religion of the slaves, 
and the Duke of Argyll will doubtless admit that this is 
a power which one man ought not to have over another. 
Yet he must know that at the disruption of the Scottish 
Church, some forty years ago, Scottish proprietors not 
merely evicted tenants who joined the Free Church (and 
in many cases eviction meant ruin and death), but abso- 
lutely refused sites for churches and even permission f6r 
the people to stand upon the land and worship God 
according to the dictates of their conscience. Hugh Miller 
has told, in " The Cruise of the Betsy," how one minister, 
denied permission to live on the land, had to make his 
home on the sea in a small boat. Large congregations 
had to worship on mountain roadsides without shelter 
from storm and sleet, and even on the sea-shore, where 
the tide flowed around their knees as they took the com- 
munion. But perhaps the slavishness which has been 
engendered in Scotland by land monopoly is not better 
illustrated than in the case where, after keeping them off 



70 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

his land for more than six years, a Scottish duke allowed 
a congregation the use of a gravel-pit for purposes of 
worship, whereupon they sent him a resolution of thanks ! 

In the large cities tyranny of this kind cannot, of course, 
be exercised, but it is in the large cities that the slavery 
resulting from the reduction of land to private ownership 
assumes the darkest shades. Negro slavery had its hor- 
rors, but they were not so many or so black as those 
constantly occurring in such cities. Their own selfish 
interests, if not their human sympathies or the restraint 
of public opinion, would have prevented the owners of 
negro slaves from lodging and feeding and working them 
as many of the so-called free people in the centers of 
civilization are lodged and fed and worked. 

With all allowance for the prepossessions of a great 
landlord, it is difficult to understand how the Duke of 
Argyll can regard as an animating scene the history of 
agricultural improvement in Scotland since 1745. From 
the date mentioned, and the fact that he is a Highlander, 
I presume that he refers mainly to the Highlands. But 
as a parallel to calling this history "animating," I can 
think of nothing so close as the observation of an econo- 
mist of the Duke's school, who, in an account of a visit to 
Scotland, a generation or so ago, spoke of the pleasure 
with which, in a workhouse, he had seen " both sexes and 
all ages, even to infants of two and three years, earning 
their living by picking oakum," or as the expression of 
pride with which a Polish noble, in the last century, 
pointed out to an English visitor some miserable-looking 
creatures who, he said, were samples of the serfs, any one 
of whom he could kick as he pleased ! 

"Thousands and thousands of acres," says the Duke, 
" have been reclaimed from barren wastes ; ignorance has 
given place to science, and barbarous customs of imme- 
morial strength have been replaced by habits of inteUi- 



THE "REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 71 

gence and business." This is one side of the picture, but 
unfortunately there is another side— chieftains taking 
advantage of the reverential affection of their clansmen, 
and their ignorance of a foreign language and a foreign 
law, to reduce those clansmen to a condition of virtual 
slavery 5 to rob them of the land which by immemorial 
custom they had enjoyed j to substitute for the mutual 
tie that bound chief to vassal and vassal to chief, the cold 
maxims of money-making greed ; to drive them from their 
homes that sheep might have place, or to hand them over 
to the tender mercies of a great farmer. 

" There has been grown," says the Duke, " more corn, 
more potatoes, more turnips j there has been produced 
more milk, more butter, more cheese, more beef, more 
mutton, more pork, more fowls and eggs." But what 
becomes of them? The Duke must know that the ordi- 
nary food of the common people is meal and potatoes; 
that of these many do not get enough ; that many would 
starve outright if they were not kept alive by charity. 
Even the wild meat which their fathers took freely, the 
common people cannot now touch. A Highland poor-law 
physician, whose district is on the estate of a prominent 
member of the Liberal party, was telling me recently of 
the miserable poverty of the people among whom his 
official duties lie, and how insufficient and monotonous 
food was beginning to produce among them diseases like 
the pellagra in Italy. When I asked him if they could 
not, despite the gamekeepers, take for themselves enough 
fish and game to vary their diet, '^ They never think of it," 
he replied ; " they are too cowed. Why, the moment any 
one of them was even suspected of cultivating a taste for 
trout or grouse, he would be driven off the estate like a 
mad dog." 

Besides the essays and journals referred to by the Duke 
of Argyll, there is another publication, which any one 



72 PROPERTY IN LAND. 

wishing to be informed on the subject may read with 
advantage, though not with pleasure. It is entitled 
^^ Highland Clearances," and is pubHshed in Inverness by 
A. McKenzie. There is nothing in savage life more cold- 
bloodedly atrocious than the warfare here recorded as 
carried on against the clansmen by those who were their 
hereditary protectors. The burning of houses ; the ejec- 
tion of old and young ; the tearing down of shelters put 
up to shield women with child and tender infants from 
the bitter night blast; the threats of similar treatment 
against all who should give them hospitality ; the forcing 
of poor helpless creatures into emigrant ships which car- 
ried them to strange lands and among a people of whose 
tongue they were utterly ignorant, to die in many cases 
like rotten sheep or to be reduced to utter degradation. 
An animating scene truly ! Great districts once peopled 
with a race, rude it may be and slavish to their chiefs, but 
still a race of manly virtues, brave, kind, and hospitable 
— now tenanted only by sheep or cattle, by grouse or deer ! 
No one can read of the atrocities perpetrated upon the 
Scottish people, during what is called "the improvement 
of the Highlands," without feeling something like utter 
contempt for men who, lions abroad, were such sheep at 
home that they suffered these outrages without striking 
a blow, even if an ineffectual one. But the explanation 
of this reveals a lower depth in the " reduction to iniquity." 
The reason of the tame submission of the Highland people 
to outrages which should have nerved the most timid is 
to be found in the prostitution of their religion. The 
Highland people are a deeply religious people, and dur- 
ing these evictions their preachers preached to fchem 
that their trials were the visitations of the Almighty 
and must be submitted to under the penalty of eternal 
damnation ! 



THE ''REDUCTION TO INIQUITY.'' 73 

I met accidentally in Scotland, recently, a lady of the 
small landlord class, and the conversation turned upon 
the poverty of the Highland people. " Yes, they are poor," 
she said, " but they deserve to be poor ; they are so dirty. 
I have no sympathy with women who won't keep their 
houses neat and their children tidy.'' 

I suggested that neatness could hardly be expected from 
women who every day had to trudge for miles with creels 
of peat and seaweed on their backs. 

" Yes," she said, " they do have to work hard. But that 
is not so sad as the hard lives of the horses. Did you 
ever think of the horses? They have to work all their 
lives— till they can't work any longer. It makes me sad 
to think of it. There ought to be big farms where horses 
should be turned out after they had worked some years, 
so that they might have time to enjoy themselves before 
they died." 

"But the people?" I interposed. "They, too, have to 
work till they can't work longer." 

" Oh, yes ! " she replied, " but the people have souls, and 
even if they do have a hard time of it here, they will, if 
they are good, go to heaven when they die, and be happy 
hereafter. But the poor beasts have no souls, and if they 
don't enjoy themselves here, they have no chance of 
enjoying themselves at all. It is too bad ! " 

The woman was in sober earnest. And I question if 
she did not fairly represent much that has been taught in 
Scotland as Christianity. But at last, thank Grod ! the day 
is breaking, and the blasphemy that has been preached as 
religion will not be heard much longer. The manifesto 
of the Scottish Land Restoration League, calling upon the 
Scottish people to bind themselves together in solemn 
league and covenant for the extirpation of the sin and 
shame of landlordism, is a lark's note in the dawn. 



74 PEOPERTY IN LAND. 

As in Scotland so elsewhere. I have spoken particularly 
o^ Scotland only because the Duke does so. But every- 
where that our civilization extends the same primary 
injustice is bearing the same evil fruits. And everywhere 
the same spirit is rising, the same truth is beginning to 
force its way. 



THE 
CONDITION OF LABOR 



AN OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIIL 
BY HENRY GEORGE 

WITH ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIIL ON 
THE CONDITION OF LABOR 



Copyright, 18815 

BY 

HENRY GEORGE 



THE CONDITION OF LABOR 

AN OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 



TO Pope Leo XIII. 
Your Holiness : I have read with care your Encyc- 
lical letter on the condition of labor, addressed, through 
the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops and Bishops of 
your faith, to the Christian World. 

Since its most strikingly pronounced condemnations 
are directed against a theory that we who hold it know to 
be deserving of your support, I ask permission to lay 
before your Holiness the grounds of our belief, and to set 
forth some considerations that you have unfortunately 
overlooked. The momentous seriousness of the facts you 
refer to, the poverty, suffering and seething discontent 
that pervade the Christian world, the danger that passion 
may lead ignorance in a blind struggle against social con- 
ditions rapidly becoming intolerable, are my justification. 

L 

Our postulates are all stated or implied in your Encyc- 
lical. They are the primary perceptions of human reason, 
the fundamental teachings of the Christian faith : 

We hold : That— 

This world is the creation of God. 



4 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

The men brougM into it for the brief period of their 
earthly lives are the equal creatures of his bounty, the 
equal subjects of his provident care. 

By his constitution man is beset by physical wants, on 
the satisfaction of which depend not only the maintenance 
of his physical life but also the development of his intel- 
lectual and spiritual life. 

God has made the satisfaction of these wants dependent 
on man's own exertions, giving him the power and laying 
on him the injunction to labor— a power that of itseK 
raises him far above the brute, since we may reverently 
say that it enables him to become as it were a helper in 
the creative work. 

God has not put on man the task of making bricks 
without straw. With the need for labor and the power 
to labor he has also given to man the material for labor. 
This material is land— man physically being a land animal, 
who can live only on and from land, and can use other 
elements, such as air, sunshine and water, only by the use 
of land. 

Being the equal creatures of the Creator, equally entitled 
under his providence to live their lives and satisfy their 
needs, men are equally entitled to the use of land, and 
any adjustment that denies this equal use of land is 
morally wrong. 

As to the right of ownership, we hold : That- 
Being created individuals, with individual wants and 
powers, men are individually entitled (subject of course 
to the moral obligations that arise from such relations as 
that of the family) to the use of their own powers and 
the enjoyment of the results. 

There thus arises, anterior to human law, and deriving 
its validity from the law of God, a right of private owner- 
ship in things produced by labor— a right that the pos- 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xm. 5 

sessor may transfer, but of which to deprive him without 
his will is theft. 

This right of property, originating in the right of the 
individual to himself, is the only full and complete right 
of property. It attaches to things produced by labor, but 
cannot attach to things created by God. 

Thus, if a man take a fish from the ocean he acquires a 
right of property in that fish, which exclusive right he 
may transfer by sale or gift. But he cannot obtain a 
similar right of property in the ocean, so that he may sell 
it or give it or forbid others to use it. 

Or, if he set up a windmill he acquires a right of prop- 
erty in the things such use of wind enables him to produce. 
But he cannot claim a right of property in the wind itself, 
so that he may sell it or forbid others to use it. 

Or, if he cultivate grain he acquires a right of property 
in the grain his labor brings forth. But he cannot obtain 
a similar right of property in the sun which ripened it or 
the soil on which it grew. For these things are of the 
continuing gifts of God to all generations of men, which 
all may use, but none may claim as his alone. 

To attach to things created by God the same right of 
private ownership that justly attaches to things produced 
by labor is to impair and deny the true rights of property. 
For a man who out of the proceeds of his labor is obhged 
to pay another man for the use of ocean or air or sunshine 
or soil, all of which are to men involved in the single term 
land, is in this deprived of his rightful property and thus 
robbed. 

As to the use of land, we hold : That— 

While the right of ownership that justly attaches to 
things produced by labor cannot attach to land, there 
may attach to land a right of possession. As your Holi- 
ness says, " God has not granted the earth to mankind in 



6 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

general in the sense that all without distinction can deal 
with it as they please/' and regulations necessary for its 
best use may be fixed by human laws. But such regula- 
tions must conform to the moral law— must secure to all 
equal participation in the advantages of God's general 
bounty. The principle is the same as where a human 
father leaves property equally to a number of children. 
Some of the things thus left may be incapable of common 
use or of specific division. Such things may properly be 
assigned to some of the children, but only under con- 
dition that the equality of benefit among them all be 
preserved. 

In the rudest social state, while industry consists in 
hunting, fishing, and gathering the spontaneous fruits of 
the earth, private possession of land is not necessary. 
But as men begin to cultivate the ground and expend 
their labor in permanent works, private possession of the 
land on which labor is thus expended is needed to seciire 
the right of property in the products of labor. For who 
would sow if not assured of the exclusive possession 
needed to enable him to reap? who would attach costly 
works to the soil without such exclusive possession of the 
soil as would enable him to secure the benefit ? 

This right of private possession in things created by 
God is however very different from the right of private 
ownership in things produced by labor. The one is 
limited, the other unlimited, save in cases when the 
dictate of self-preservation terminates all other rights. 
The purpose of the one, the exclusive possession of land, 
is merely to secure the other, the exclusive ownership of 
the products of labor; and it can never rightfully be 
carried so far as to impair or deny this. While any one 
may hold exclusive possession of land so far as it does 
not interfere with the equal rights of others, he can 
rightfully hold it no further. 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XHI. 7 

.rhus Cain and Abel, were there only two men on 
earth, might by agreement divide the earth between 
them. Under this compact each might claim exclusive 
right to his share as against the other. But neither 
could rightfully continue such claim against the next 
man born. For since no one comes into the world with- 
out God^s permission, his presence attests his equal right 
to the use of God's bounty. For them to refuse him any 
use of the earth which they had divided between them 
would therefore be for them to commit murder. And 
for them to refuse him any use of the earth, unless by 
laboring for them or by giving them part of the products 
of his labor he bought it of them, would be for them to 
commit theft. 

God's laws do not change. Though their applications 
may alter with altering conditions, the same principles 
of right and wrong that hold when men are few and 
industry is rude also hold amid teeming populations and 
complex industries. In our cities of millions and our 
states of scores of milUons, in a civilization where the 
division of labor has gone so far that large numbers are 
hardly conscious that they are land-users, it still remains 
true that we are all land animals and can live only on 
land, and that land is God's bounty to all, of which no 
one can be deprived without being murdered, and for 
which no one can be compelled to pay another without 
being robbed. But even in a state of society where the 
elaboration of industry and the increase of permanent 
improvements have made the need for private possession 
of land wide-spread, there is no difficulty in conforming 
individual possession with the equal right to land. For 
as soon as any piece of land will yield to the possessor a 
larger return than is had by similar labor on other land 
a value attaches to it which is shown when it is sold or 



8 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

rented. Thus, the value of the land itself, irrespective 
of the value of any improvements in or on it, always 
indicates the precise value of the benefit to which all are 
entitled in its use, as distinguished from the value which, 
as producer or successor of a producer, belongs to the 
possessor in individual right. 

To combine the advantages of private possession with 
the justice of common ownership it is only necessary 
therefore to take for common uses what value attaches 
to land irrespective of any exertion of labor on it. The 
principle is the same as in the case referred to, where a 
human father leaves equally to his children things not 
susceptible of specific division or common use. In that 
case such things would be sold or rented and the value 
equally applied. 

It is on this common-sense principle that we, who 
term ourselves single-tax men, would have the commu- 
nity act. 

We do not propose to assert equal rights to land by 
keeping land common, letting any one use any part of it 
at any time. We do not propose the task, impossible in 
the present state of society, of dividing land in equal 
shares ; still less the yet more impossible task of keeping 
it so divided. 

We propose— leaving land in the private possession of 
individuals, with full Liberty on their part to give, sell 
or bequeath it— simply to levy on it for public uses a 
tax that shaU equal the annual value of the land itself, 
irrespective of the use made of it or the improvements 
on it. And since this would provide amply for the need 
of public revenues, we would accompany this tax on land 
values with the repeal of all taxes now levied on the 
products and processes of industry— which taxes, since 
they take from the earnings of labor, we hold to be 
infringements of the right of property. 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 9 

This we propose, not as a cunning device of human 
ingenuity, but as a conforming of human regulations to 
the will of Grod. 

God cannot contradict himself nor impose on his crea- 
tures laws that clash. 

If it be God's command to men that they should not 
steal— that is to say, that they should respect the right 
of property which each one has in the fruits of his labor ; 

And if he be also the Father of all men, who in his 
common bounty has intended all to have equal opportu- 
nities for sharing ; 

Then, in any possible stage of civilization, however 
elaborate, there must be some way in which the exclusive 
right to the produ.Tfcs of industry may be reconciled with 
the equal right to land. 

If the Almighty be consistent with himself, it cannot 
be, as say those socialists referred to by you, that in 
order to secure the equal participation of men in the 
opportunities of life and labor we must ignore the right 
of private property. Nor yet can it be, as you yourself 
in the Encyclical seem to argue, that to secure the right 
of private property we must ignore the equality of right 
in the opportunities of life and labor. To say the one 
thing or the other is equally to deny the harmony of 
God's laws. 

But, the private possession of land, subject to the 
payment to the community of the value of any special 
advantage thus given to the individual, satisfies both 
laws, securing to all equal participation in the bounty of 
the Creator and to each the fuU ownership of the prod- 
ucts of his labor. 

Nor do we hesitate to say that this way of securing 
the equal right to the bounty of the Creator and the 
exclusive right to the products of labor is the way 



10 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 

intended by Grod for raising public revenues. For we 
are not atheists, wbo deny Godj nor semi-atheists, who 
deny that he has any concern in politics and legislation. 

It is true as you say—a salutary truth too often for- 
gotten—that ^'man is older than the state, and he holds 
the right of providing for the life of his body prior to 
the formation of any state." Yet, as you too perceive, it 
is also true that the state is in the divinely appointed 
order. For He who foresaw all things and provided for 
all things, foresaw and provided that with the increase 
of population and the development of industry the 
organization of human society into states or govern- 
ments would become both expedient and necessary. 

No sooner does the state arise than, as we all know, it 
needs revenues. This need for revenues is small at first, 
while population is sparse, industry rude and the func- 
tions of the state few and simple. But with growth of 
population and advance of civilization the functions of the 
state increase and larger and larger revenues are needed. 

Now, He that made the world and placed man in it. 
He that pre-ordained civilization as the means whereby 
man might rise to higher powers and become more and 
more conscious of the works of his Creator, must have 
foreseen this increasing need for state revenues and have 
made provision for it. That is to say: The increasing 
need for public revenues with social advance, being a 
natural, God-ordained need, there must be a right way 
of raising them— some way that we can truly say is the 
way intended by Grod. It is clear that this right way of 
raising public revenues must accord with the moral law. 

Hence : 

It must not take from individuals what rightfully 
belongs to individuals. 

It must not give some an advantage over others, as by 
increasing the prices of what some have to sell and 
others must buy. 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 11 

It must not lead men into temptation, by requiring 
trivial oaths, by making it profitable to lie, to swear 
falsely, to bribe or to take bribes. 

It must not confuse tbe distinctions of right and 
wrong, and weaken the sanctions of religion and the 
state by creating crimes that are not sins, and punishing 
men for doing what in itself they have an undoubted 
right to do. 

It must not repress industry. It must not check com- 
merce. It must not punish thrift. It must offer no 
impediment to the largest production and the fairest 
division of wealth. 

Let me ask your Holiness to consider the taxes on the 
processes and products of industry by which through the 
civilized world public revenues are collected— the octroi 
duties that surround Italian cities with barriers j the 
monstrous customs duties that hamper intercourse 
between so-called Christian states; the taxes on occupa- 
tions, on earnings, on investments, on the building of 
houses, on the cultivation of fields, on industry and thrift 
in all forms. Can these be the ways God has intended 
that governments should raise the means they need? 
Have any of them the characteristics indispensable in 
any plan we can deem a right one ? 

' All these taxes violate the moral law. They take by 
force what belongs to the individual alone ; they give to 
the unscrupulous an advantage over the scrupulous; 
they have the effect, nay are largely intended, to increase 
the price of what some have to sell and others must buy ; 
they corrupt government; they make oaths a mockery; 
they shackle commerce; they fine industry and thrift; 
they lessen the wealth that men might enjoy, and enrich 
some by impoverishing others. 

Yet what most strikingly shows how opposed to Chris- 
tianity is this system of raising public revenues is its 
influence on thought. 



12 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

Christianity teaclies us that all men ai;e brethren ; that 
their true interests are harmonious, not antagonistic. It 
gives us, as the golden rule of life, that we should do to 
others as we would have others do to us. But out of the 
system of taxing the products and processes of labor, 
and out of its effects in increasing the price of what 
some have to sell and others must buy, has grown the 
theory of "protection," which denies this gospel, which 
holds Christ ignorant of political economy and proclaims 
laws of national well-being utterly at variance with his 
teaching. This theory sanctifies national hatreds; it 
inculcates a universal war of hostile tariffs; it teaches 
peoples that their prosperity lies in imposing on the 
productions of other peoples restrictions they do not 
wish imposed on their own ; and instead of the Christian 
doctrine of man^s brotherhood it makes injury of for- 
eigners a civic virtue. 

" By their fruits ye shall know them." Can anything 
more clearly show that to tax the products and processes 
of industry is not the way God intended public revenues 
to be raised ? 

But to consider what we propose— the raising of public 
revenues by a single tax on the value of land irrespective 
of improvements— is to see that in all respects this does 
conform to the moral law. 

Let me ask your Holiness to keep in mind that the 
value we propose to tax, the value of land irrespective of 
improvements, does not come from any exertion of labor 
or investment of capital on or in it — the values produced 
in this way being values of improvement which we 
would exempt. The value of land irrespective of 
improvement is the value that attaches to land by reason 
of increasing population and social progress. This is a 
value that always goes to the owner as owner, and never 
does and never can go to the user; for if the user be a 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XHI. 13 

different person from tlie owner lie must always pay the 
owner for it in rent or in purchase-money ; while if the 
user be also the owner, it is as owner, not as user, that 
he receives it, and by selling or renting the land he can, 
as owner, continue to receive it after he ceases to be a 
user. 

Thus, taxes on land irrespective of improvement can- 
not lessen the rewards of industry, nor add to prices,* nor 
in any way take from the individual what belongs to the 
individual. They can take only the value that attaches 
to land by the growth of the community, and which 
therefore belongs to the community as a whole. 

To take land values for the state, abolishing all taxes 
on the products of labor, would therefore leave to the 

* As to tMs point it may be well to add tliat all economists are 
agreed that taxes on land values irrespective of improvement or use 
—or what in the terminology of political economy is styled rent, a 
term distinguished from the ordinary use of the word rent by being 
applied solely to payments for the use of land itself —must be paid 
by the owner and cannot be shifted by him on the user. To explain 
in another way the reason given in the text : Price is not determined 
by the will of the seller or the will of the buyer, but by the equation 
of demand and supply, and therefore as to things constantly demanded 
and constantly produced rests at a point determined by the cost of 
production— whatever tends to increase the cost of bringing fresh 
quantities of such articles to the consumer increasing price by check- 
ing supply, and whatever tends to reduce such cost decreasing price 
by increasing supply. Thus taxes on wheat or tobacco or cloth add 
to the price that the consumer must pay, and thus the cheapening 
in the cost of producing steel which improved processes have made 
in recent years has greatly reduced the price of steel. But land has 
no cost of production, since it is created by God, not produced by 
man. Its price therefore is fixed— 1 (monopoly rent), where land is 
held in close monopoly, by what the owners can extract from the 
users under penalty of deprivation and consequently of starvation, 
and amounts to all that common labor can earn on it beyond what is 
necessary to life ; 2 (economic rent proper), where there is no special 
monopoly, by what the particular land will yield to common labor 



14 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

laborer the full produce of labor 5 to the individual all 
that rightfully belongs to the individual. It would 
impose no burden on industry, no check on commerce, 
no punishment on thrift j it would secure the largest 
production and the fairest distribution of wealth, by 
leaving men free to produce and to exchange as they 
please, without any artificial enhancement of prices ; and 
by taking for public purposes a value that cannot be 
carried off, that cannot be hidden, that of all values is 
most easily ascertained and most certainly and cheaply 
collected, it would enormously lessen the number of 
officials, dispense with oaths, do away with temptations 
to bribery and evasion, and abolish man-made crimes in 
themselves innocent. 

over and above what may be liad by like expenditure and exertion 
on land having no special advantage and for which no rent is paid ; 
and, 3 (speculative rent, which is a species of monopoly rent, telling 
particularly in selling price), by the expectation of future increase 
of value from social growth and improvement, which expectation 
causing landowners to withhold land at present prices has the same 
effect as combination. 

Taxes on land values or economic rent can therefore never be 
shifted by the landowner to the land-user, since they in no wise 
increase the demand for land or enable landowners to check supply 
by withholding land from use. Where rent depends on mere monopo- 
lization, a case I mention because rent may in this way be demanded 
for the use of land even before economic or natural rent arises, the 
taking by taxation of what the landowners were able to extort from 
labor could not enable them to extort any more, since laborers, if 
not left enough to live on, will die. So, in the case of economic rent 
proper, to take from the landowners the premiums they receive, 
would in no way increase the superiority of theier land and the demand 
for it. While, so far as price is affected by speculative rent, to compel 
the landowners to pay taxes on the value of land whether they were 
getting any income from it or not, would make it more diflB.cult for 
them to withhold land from use ; and to tax the full value would not 
merely destroy the power but the desire to do so. 



OPEN LETTEE TO POPE LEO Xin. 15 

But; further: That God has intended the state to 
obtain the revenues it needs by the taxation of land 
values is shown by the same order and degree of evi- 
dence that shows that G-od has intended the milk of the 
mother for the nourishment of the babe. 

See how close is the analogy. In that primitive condi- 
tion ere the need for the state arises there are no land 
values. The products of labor have value, but in the 
sparsity of population no value as yet attaches to land 
itself. But as increasing density of population and 
increasing elaboration of industry necessitate the organi- 
zation of the state, with its need for revenues, value 
begins to attach to land. As population still increases 
and industry grows more elaborate, so the needs for 
public revenues increase. And at the same time and 
from the same causes land values increase. The connec- 
tion is invariable. The value of things produced by 
labor tends to decline with social development, since the 
larger scale of production and the improvement of pro- 
cesses tend steadily to reduce their cost. But the value 
of land on which population centers goes up and up. 
Take Rome or Paris or London or New York or Mel- 
bourne. Consider the enormous value of land in such 
cities as compared with the value of land in sparsely 
settled parts of the same countries. To what is this due ? 
Is it not due to the density and activity of the popula- 
tions of those cities — to the very causes that require 
great public expenditure for streets, drains, public build- 
ings, and all the many things needed for the health, 
convenience and safety of such great cities? See how 
with the growth of such cities the one thing that steadily 
increases in value is land ; how the opening of roads, the 
building of railways, the making of any pubhc improve- 
ment, adds to the value of land. Is it not clear that here 



16 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 

is a natural law— tliat is to say a tendency willed by the 
Creator? Can it mean anything else than that He who 
ordained the state with its needs has in the values which 
attach to land provided the means to meet those needs ? 

That it does mean this and nothing else is confirmed if 
we look deeper still, and inquire not merely as to the 
intent, but as to the purpose of the intent. If we do so 
we may see in this natural law by which land values 
increase with the growth of society not only such a per- 
fectly adapted provision for the needs of society as 
gratifies our intellectual perceptions by showing us the 
wisdom of the Creator, but a purpose with regard to the 
individual that gratifies our moral perceptions by open- 
ing to us a glimpse of his beneficence. 

Consider: Here is a natural law by which as society 
advances the one thing that increases in value is land— a 
natural law by virtue of which all growth of population, 
all advance of the arts, all general improvements of 
whatever kind, add to a fund that both the commands of 
justice and the dictates of expediency prompt us to take 
for the common uses of society. Now, since increase in 
the fund available for the common uses of society is 
increase in the gain that goes equally to each member of 
society, is it not clear that the law by which land values 
increase with social advance while the value of the prod- 
ucts of labor does not increase, tends with the advance of 
civilization to make the share that goes equally to each 
member of society more and more important as compared 
with what goes to him from his individual earnings, and 
thus to make the advance of civilization lessen relatively 
the differences that in a ruder social state must exist 
between the strong and the weak, the fortunate and the 
unfortunate 1 Does it not show the purpose of the Creator 
to be that the advance of man in civilization should be 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 17 

an advance not merely to larger powers but to a greater 
and greater equality, instead of wliat we, by our ignoring 
of his intent, are making it, an advance toward a more 
and more monstrous inequality ? 

That the value attaching to land with social growth is 
intended for social needs is shown by the final proof. 
God is indeed a jealous God in the sense that nothing 
but injury and disaster can attend the effort of men to 
do things other than in the way he has intended ; in the 
sense that where the blessings he proffers to men are 
refused or misused they turn to evils that scourge us. 
And just as for the mother to withhold the provision 
that fills her breast with the birth of the child is to 
endanger physical health, so for society to refuse to take 
for social uses the provision intended for them is to 
breed social disease. 

For refusal to take for public purposes the increasing 
values that attach to land with social growth is to neces- 
sitate the getting of public revenues by taxes that lessen 
production, distort distribution and corrupt society.. It 
is to leave some to take what justly belongs to all 5 it is 
to forego the only means by which it is possible in an 
advanced civilization to combine the security of posses- 
sion thr.t is necessary to improvement with the equality 
of natural opportunity that is the most important of all 
natural rights. It is thus at the basis of all social life 
to set up an unjust inequality between man and man, 
compelling some to pay others for the privilege of living, 
for the chance of working, for the advantages of civiliza- 
tion, for the gifts of their God. But it is even more 
than this. The very robbery that the masses of men 
thus suffer gives rise in advancing communities to a new 
robbery. For the value that with the increase of popula- 
tion and social advance attaches to land being suffered 



18 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 

to go to individuals wlio have secured ownersMp of the 
land, it prompts to a forestalling of and speculation in 
land wherever there is any prospect of advancing popula- 
tion or of coming improvement, thus producing an arti- 
ficial scarcity of the natural elements of life and labor, 
and a strangulation of production that shows itself in 
recurring spasms of industrial depression as disastrous 
to the world as destructive wars. It is this that is 
driving men from the old countries to the new countries, 
only to bring there the same curses. It is this that 
causes our material advance not merely to fail to improve 
the condition of the mere worker, but to make the condi- 
tion of large classes positively worse. It is this that in 
our richest Christian countries is giving us a large pop- 
ulation whose lives are harder, more hopeless, more 
degraded than those of the veriest savages. It is this 
that leads so many men to think that God is a bungler 
and is constantly bringing more people into his world 
than he has made provision for -, or that there is no God, 
and that belief in him is a superstition which the facts of 
life and the advance of science are dispelling. 

The darkness in light, the weakness in strength, the 
poverty amid wealth, the seething discontent foreboding 
civil strife, that characterize our civilization of to-day, 
are the natural, the inevitable results of our rejection of 
God's beneficence, of our ignoring of his intent. Were 
we on the other hand to follow his clear, simple rule of 
right, leaving scrupulously to the individual all that 
^ individual labor produces, and taking for the community 
the value that attaches to land by the growth of the com- 
munity itself, not merely could evil modes of raising 
public revenues be dispensed with, but aU men would be 
placed on an equal level of opportunity with regard to 
the bounty of their Creator, on an equal level of oppor- 
tunity to exert their labor and to enjoy its fruits. And 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XUl. 19 

then, without drastic or restrictive measures the fore- 
stalling of land would cease. For then the possession of 
land would mean only security for the permanence of its 
use, and there would be no object for any one to get land 
or to keep land except for use ; nor would his possession 
of better land than others had confer any unjust advan- 
tage on him, or unjust deprivation on them, since the 
equivalent of the advantage would be taken by the state 
for the benefit of all. 

The Right Reverend Dr. Thomas Nulty, Bishop of 
Meath, who sees all this as clearly as we do, in pointing 
out to the clergy and laity of his diocese* the design of 
Divine Providence that the rent of land should be taken 
for the community, says : 

I think, therefore, that I may fairly infer, on the strength of 
authority as well as of reason, that the people are and always must 
be the real owners of the land of their country. This great social 
fact appears to me to be of incalculable importance, and it is fortu- 
nate, indeed, that on the strictest principles of justice it is not clouded 
even by a shadow of uncertainty or doubt. There is, moreover, a 
charm and a peculiar beauty in the clearness with which it reveals 
the wisdom and the benevolence of the designs of Providence in the 
admirable provision he has made for the wants and the necessities 
of that state of social existence of which he is author, and in which 
the very instincts of nature tell us we are to spend our lives. A 
vast public property, a great national fund, has been placed under 
the dominion and at the disposal of the nation to supply itself abun- 
dantly with resources necessary to liquidate the expenses of its 
government, the administration of its laws and the education of its 
youth, and to enable it to provide for the suitable sustentation and 
support of its criminal and pauper population. One of the most 
interesting peculiarities of this property is that its value is never 
stationary ; it is constantly progressive and increasing in a direct 
ratio to the growth of the population, and the very causes that 
increase and multiply the demands made on it increase proportion- 
ately its ability to meet them. 

* Letter addressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of 
Meath, L-eland, April 2, 1881. 



20 THE CONDITION OP LABOR. 

There is, indeed, as Bishop Nulty says, a peculiar 
beauty in the clearness with which the wisdom and benev- 
olence of Providence are revealed in this great social 
fact, the provision made for the common needs of society 
in what economists call the law of rent. Of all the evi- 
dence that natural religion gives, it is this that most 
clearly shows the existence of a beneficent God, and most 
conclusively silences the doubts that in our days lead so 
many to materialism. 

For in this beautiful provision made by natural law for 
the social needs of civilization we see that God has 
intended civilization ; that all our discoveries and inven- 
tions do not and cannot outrun his forethought, and that 
steam, electricity and labor-saving appliances only make 
the great moral laws clearer and more important. In 
the growth of this great fund, increasing with social 
advance— a fund that accrues from the growth of the 
community and belongs therefore to the community — we 
see not only that there is no need for the taxes that 
lessen wealth, that engender corruption, that promote 
inequality and teach men to deny the gospel; but that 
to take this fund for the purpose for which it was evi- 
dently intended would in the highest civilization secure 
to all the equal enjoyment of God's bounty, the abundant 
opportunity to satisfy their wants, and would provide 
amply for every legitimate need of the state. We see 
that God in his dealings with men has not been a 
bungler or a niggard ; that he has not brought too many 
men into the world 5 that he has not neglected abun- 
dantly to supply them 5 that he has not intended that 
bitter competition of the masses for a mere animal 
existence and that monstrous aggregation of wealth 
which characterize our civilization ; but that these evils 
which lead so many to say there is no God, or yet more 
impiously to say that they are of God's ordering, are due 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 21 

to OTir denial of his moral law. We see that the law of 
justice, the law of the Grolden Eule, is not a mere counsel 
of perfection, but indeed the law of social life. We see 
that if we were only to observe it there would be work 
for all, leisure for all, abundance for all ; and that civili- 
zation would tend to give to the poorest not only neces- 
saries, but all comforts and reasonable luxuries as well. 
We see that Christ was not a mere dreamer when he told 
men that if they would seek the kingdom of God and its 
right-doing they might no more worry about material 
things than do the lilies of the field about their raiment j 
but that he was only declaring what political economy in 
the light of modern discovery shows to be a sober truth. 

Your Holiness, even to see this is deep and lasting joy. 
For it is to see for one's self that there is a God who lives 
and reigns, and that he is a God of justice and love— Our 
Father who art in Heaven. It is to open a rift of sun- 
light through the clouds of our darker questionings, and 
to make the faith that trusts where it cannot see a living 
thing. 



n. 

Your Holiness will see from the explanation I have 
given that the reform we propose, like all true reforms, 
has both an ethical and an economic side. By ignoring 
the ethical side, and pushing our proposal merely as a 
reform of taxation, we could avoid the objections that 
arise from confounding ownership with possession and 
attributing to private property in land that security of 
use and improvement that can be had even better without 
it. All that we seek practically is the legal abolition, as 
fast as possible, of taxes on the products and processes 
of labor, and the consequent concentration of taxation 



22 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

on land values irrespective of improvements. To put our 
proposals in this way would be to urge them merely as a 
matter of wise public expediency. 

There are indeed many single-tax men who do put our 
proposals in this wayj who seeing the beauty of our 
plan from a fiscal standpoint do not concern themselves 
further. But to those who think as I do, the ethical is 
the more important side. Not only do we not wish to 
evade the question of private property in land, but to us 
it seems that the beneficent and far-reaching revolution 
we aim at is too great a thing to be accomphshed by 
"intelligent self-interest/' and can be carried by nothing 
less than the religious conscience. 

Hence we earnestly seek the judgment of religion. 
This is the tribunal of which your Holiness as the head 
of the largest body of Christians is the most august 
representative. 

It therefore behooves us to examine the reasons you 
urge in support of private property in land — if they be 
sound to accept them, and if they be not sound respect- 
fully to point out to you wherein is their error. 

To your proposition that "Our first and most funda- 
mental principle when we undertake to alleviate the con- 
dition of the masses must be the inviolability of private 
property" we would joyfully agree if we could only 
understand you to have in mind the moral element, and 
to mean rightful private property, as when you speak 
of marriage as ordained by God's authority we may 
understand an implied exclusion of improper marriages. 
Unfortunately, however, other expressions show that you 
mean private property in general and have expressly 
in mind private property in land. This confusion of 
thought, this non-distribution of terms, runs through 
your whole argument, leading you to conclusions so 
unwarranted by your premises as to be utterly repugnant 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xm. 23 

to them, as when from the moral sanction of private 
property in the things produced by labor you infer some- 
thing entirely different and utterly opposed, a similar 
right of property in the land created by God. 

Private property is not of one species, and moral sanc- 
tion can no more be asserted universally of it than of 
marriage. That proper marriage conforms to the law of 
God does not justify the polygamic or polyandric or 
incestuous marriages that are in some countries permitted 
by the civil law. And as there may be immoral marriage 
so may there be immoral private property. Private prop- 
erty is that which may be held in ownership by an indi- 
vidual, or that which may be held in ownership by an 
individual with the sanction of the state. The mere 
lawyer, the mere servant of the state, may rest here, 
refusing to distinguish between what the state holds 
equally lawful. Your Holiness, however, is not a servant 
of the state, but a servant of God, a guardian of morals. 
You know, as said by St. Thomas of Aquin, that— 

Hmnan law is law only in virtue of its accordance with right 
reason and it is thus manifest that it flows from the eternal law. 
And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust 
law. In such case it is not law at all, iut rather a species of violence. 

Thus, that any species of property is permitted by the 
state does not of itself give it moral sanction. The state 
has often made things property that are not justly 
property, but involve violence and robbery. For 
instance, the things of rehgion, the dignity and authority 
of offices of the church, the power of administering her 
sacraments and controlling her temporalities, have often 
by profligate princes been given as salable property to 
courtiers and concubines. At this very day in England 
an atheist or a heathen may buy in open market, and 
hold as legal property, to be sold, given or bequeathed 



24 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

as he pleases, the power of appointing to the cure of 
souls, and the value of these legal rights of presentation 
is said to be no less than £17,000,000. 

Or again : Slaves were universally treated as property 
by the customs and laws of the classical nations, and 
were so acknowledged in Europe long after the accep- 
tance of Christianity. At the beginning of this century 
there was no Christian nation that did not, in her col- 
onies at least, recognize property in slaves, and slave- 
ships crossed the seas under Christian flags. In the 
United States, little more than thirty years ago, to buy a 
man gave the same legal ownership as to buy a horse, 
and in Mohammedan countries law and custom yet make 
the slave the property of his captor or purchaser. 

Yet your Holiness, one of the glories of whose pontifi- 
cate is the attempt to break up slavery in its last strong- 
holds, will not contend that the moral sanction that 
attaches to property in things produced by labor can, or 
ever could, apply to property in slaves. 

Your use, in so many passages of your Encyclical, of 
the inclusive term ''property" or "private" property, 
of which in morals nothing can be either affirmed or 
denied, makes your meaning, if we take isolated sen- 
tences, in many places ambiguous. But reading it as a 
whole, there can be no doubt of your intention that 
private property in land shall be understood when you 
speak merely of private property. With this interpreta- 
tion, I find that the reasons you urge for private property 
in land are eight. Let us consider them in order of pres- 
entation. You urge : 

1. TTiat ivJiat is bought with rightful property is rightful 
property. (5.)* 

* To facilitate references the paragraphs of the Encyclical are 
indicated by numlDer. 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 25 

Clearly, purchase and sale cannot give, but can only- 
transfer ownership. Property that in itself has no moral 
sanction does not obtain moral sanction by passing from 
seller to buyer. 

If right reason does not make the slave the property 
of the slave-hunter it does not make him the property 
of the slave-buyer. Yet your reasoning as to private 
property in land would as well justify property in slaves. 
To show this it is only needful to change in your argu- 
ment the word land to the word slave. It would then 
read: 

It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative 
labor, the very reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, 
and to hold it as his own private possession. 

If one man hires out to another his strength or his industry, he does 
this for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for food 
and living ; he thereby expressly proposes to acquire a full and legal 
right, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of that 
remuneration as he pleases. 

Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and invests his savings, 
for greater security, in a slave, the slave in such a case is only his 
wages in another form ; and consequently, a working-man's slave thus 
purchased should be as completely at his own disposal as the wages 
he receives for his labor. 

Nor in turning your argument for private property in 
land into an argument for private property in men am I 
doing a new thing. In my own country, in my own time, 
this very argument, that purchase gave ownership, was 
the common defense of slavery. It was made by states- 
men, by jurists, by clergymen, by bishops; it was 
accepted over the whole country by the great mass of 
the people. By it was justified the separation of wives 
from husbands, of children from parents, the compelling 
of labor, the appropriation of its fruits, the buying and 
selling of Christians by Christians. In language almost 
identical with yours it was asked, "Here is a poor man 



26 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

who has worked hard, lived sparingly, and invested his 
savings in a few slaves. Would you rob him of his 
earnings by liberating those slaves?" Or it was said: 
" Here is a poor widow j all her husband has been able 
to leave her is a few negroes, the earnings of his hard 
toil. Would you rob the widow and the orphan by 
freeing these negroes ? " And because of this perversion 
of reason, this confounding of unjust property rights 
with just property rights, this acceptance of man's law 
as though it were God's law, there came on our nation a 
judgment of fire and blood. 

The error of our people in thinking that what in itself 
was not rightfully property could become rightful prop- 
erty by purchase and sale is the same error into which 
your Holiness falls. It is not merely formally the same j 
it is essentially the same. Private property in land, no 
less than private property in slaves, is a violation of the 
true rights of property. They are different forms of the 
same robbery; twin devices by which the perverted 
ingenuity of man has sought to enable the strong and 
the cunning to escape God's requirement of labor by 
forcing it on others. 

What difference does it make whether I merely own 
the land on which another man must live or own the 
man himself? Am I not in the one case as much his 
master as in the other ? Can I not compel him to work 
for me? Can I not take to myself as much of the fruits 
of his labor; as fully dictate his actions? Have I not 
over him the power of hf e and death ? For to deprive a 
man of land is as certainly to kill him as to deprive him 
of blood by opening his veins, or of air by tightening a 
halter around his neck. 

The essence of slavery is in empowering one man to 
obtain the labor of another without recompense. Private 
property in land does this as fully as chattel slavery. 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xm. 27 

The slave-owner must leave to the slave enough of his 
earnings to enable him to live. Are there not in so- 
called free countries great bodies of working-men who 
get no more? How much more of the fruits of their 
toil do the agricultural laborers of Italy and England get 
than did the slaves of our Southern States? Did not 
private property in land permit the landowner of Europe 
in ruder times to demand the jus primce noctis f Does 
not the same last outrage exist to-day in diffused form 
in the immorality born of monstrous wealth on the one 
hand and ghastly poverty on the other ? 

In what did the slavery of Eussia consist but in giving 
to the master land on which the serf was forced to live ? 
When an Ivan or a Catherine enriched their favorites 
with the labor of others they did not give men, they gave 
land. And when the appropriation of land has gone so 
far that no free land remains to which the landless man 
may turn, then without further violence the more insidi- 
ous form of labor robbery involved in private property 
in land takes the place of chattel slavery, because more 
economical and convenient. For under it the slave does 
not have to be caught or held, or to be fed when not 
needed. He comes of himself, begging the privilege of 
serving, and when no longer wanted can be discharged. 
The lash is unnecessary; hunger is as ef&cacious. This 
is why the Norman conquerors of England and the Eng- 
lish conquerors of Ireland did not divide up the people, 
but divided the land. This is why European slave-ships 
took their cargoes to the New World, not to Europe. 

Slavery is not yet abolished. Though in all Christian 
countries its ruder form has now gone, it still exists in 
the heart of our civilization in more insidious form, and 
is increasing. There is work to be done for the glorj^ of 
God and the liberty of man by other soldiers of the cross 
than those warrior monks whom, with the blessing of 



28 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

your Holiness, Cardinal Lavigerie is sending into the 
Sahara. Yet, your Encyclical employs in defense of one 
form of slavery the same fallacies that the apologists for 
chattel slavery used in defense of the other ! 

The Arabs are not wanting in acumen. Your Encyc- 
lical reaches far. What shall your warrior monks say, if 
when at the muzzle of their rifles they demand of some 
Arab slave-merchant his miserable caravan, he shall 
declare that he bought them with his savings, and pro- 
ducing a copy of your Encyclical, shall prove by your 
reasoning that his slaves are consequently " only his wages 
in another form," and ask if they who bear your blessing 
and own your authority propose to " deprive him of the 
liberty of disposing of his wages and thus of all hope 
and possibility of increasing his stock and bettering his 
condition in life " ? 

2. That private property in land proceeds from man^s gift 
of reason. (6-7.) 

In the second place your Holiness argues that man 
possessing reason and forethought may not only acquire 
ownership of the fruits of the earth, but also of the earth 
itself, so that out of its products he may make provision 
for the future. 

Reason, with its attendant forethought, is indeed the 
distinguishing attribute of man 3 that which raises him 
above the brute, and shows, as the Scriptures declare, 
that he is created in the likeness of God. And this gift 
of reason does, as your Holiness points out, involve the 
need and right of private property in whatever is pro- 
duced by the exertion of reason and its attendant fore- 
thought, as well as in what is produced by physical labor. 
In truth, these elements of man^s production are insepa- 
rable, and labor involves the use of reason. It is by his 
reason that man differs from the animals in being a 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIIL 29 

producer, and in this sense a maker. Of themselves his 
physical powers are slight, forming as it were but the 
connection by which the mind takes hold of material 
things, so as to utilize to its will the matter and forces 
of nature. It is mind, the intelligent reason, that is the 
prime mover in labor, the essential agent in production. 

The right of private ownership does therefore indis- 
putably attach to things provided by man's reason and 
forethought. But it cannot attach to things provided by 
the reason and forethought of Grod ! 

To illustrate: Let us suppose a company traveling 
through the desert as the Israelites traveled from Egypt. 
Such of them as had the forethought to provide them- 
selves with vessels of water would acquire a just right 
of property in the water so carried, and in the thirst of 
the waterless desert those who had neglected to provide 
themselves, though they might ask water from the provi- 
dent in charity, could not demand it in right. For while 
water itself is of the providence of God, the presence of 
this water in such vessels, at such place, results from the 
providence of the men who carried it. Thus they have 
to it an exclusive right. 

But suppose others use their forethought in pushing 
ahead and appropriating the springs, refusing when their 
fellows come up to let them drink of the water save as 
they buy it of them. Would such forethought give any 
right? 

Your Holiness, it is not the forethought of carrying 
water where it is needed, but the forethought of seizing 
springs, that you seek to defend in defending the private 
ownership of land ! 

Let me show this more fuUy, since it may be worth 
while to meet those who say that if private property in 
land be not just, then private property in the products 
of labor is not just, as the material of these products is 



30 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 

taken from land. It will be seen on consideration that 
all of man's production is analogous to sucli transporta- 
tion of water as we have supposed. In growing grain, 
or smelting metals, or building houses, or weaving cloth, 
or doing any of the things that constitute producing, aU 
that man does is to change in place or form preexisting 
matter. As a producer man is merely a changer, not a 
creator J God alone creates. And since the changes in 
which man's production consists inhere in matter so long 
as they persist, the right of private ownership attaches 
the accident to the essence, and gives the right of owner- 
ship in that natural material in which the labor of pro- 
duction is embodied. Thus water, which in its original 
form and place is the common gift of God to all men, 
when drawn from its natural reservoir and brought into 
the desert, passes rightfully into the ownership of the 
individual who by changing its place has produced it there. 
But such right of ownership is in reality a mere right 
of temporary possession. For though man may take 
material from the storehouse of nature and change it in 
place or form to suit his desires, yet from the moment he 
takes it, it tends back to that storehouse again. Wood 
decays, iron rusts, stone disintegrates and is displaced, 
while of more perishable products, some will last for only 
a few months, others for only a few days, and some dis- 
appear immediately on use. Though, so far as we can 
see, matter is eternal and force forever persists ; though 
we can neither annihilate nor create the tiniest mote that 
floats in a sunbeam or the faintest impulse that stirs a 
leaf, yet in the ceaseless flux of nature, man's work of 
moving and combining constantly passes away. Thus 
the recognition of the ownership of what natural material 
is embodied in the products of man never constitutes 
more than temporary possession — never interferes with 
the reservoir provided for aU. As taking water from 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 31 

one place and carrying it to another place by no means 
lessens the store of water, since whether it is drunk or 
spilled or left to evaporate, it must return again to the 
natural reservoirs— so is it with all things on which man 
in production can lay the impress of his labor. 

Hence, when you say that man's reason puts it within 
his right to have in stable and permanent possession not 
only things that perish in the using, but also those that 
remain for use in the future, you are right in so far as 
you may include such things as buildings, which with 
repair will last for generations, with such things as food 
or fire-wood, which are destroyed in the use. But when 
you infer that man can have private ownership in those 
permanent things of nature that are the reservoirs from 
which all must draw, you are clearly wrong. Man may 
indeed hold in private ownership the fruits of the earth 
produced by his labor, since they lose in time the impress 
of that labor, and pass again into the natural reservoirs 
from which they were taken, and thus the ownership of 
them by one works no injury to others. But he cannot 
so own the earth itself, for that is the reservoir from 
which must constantly be drawn not only the material with 
which alone men can produce, but even their very bodies. 

The conclusive reason why man cannot claim owner- 
ship in the earth itself as he can in the fruits that he by 
labor brings forth from it, is in the facts stated by you 
in the very next paragraph (7), when you truly say : 

Man's needs do not die out, but recur; satisfied to-day, they 
demand new supplies to-morrow. Nature, therefore, owes to man a 
storehouse that shall never fail, the daily supply of his daily wants. And 
this he finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth. 

By man you mean all men. Can what nature owes to 
aU men be made the private property of some men, from 
which they may debar aU other men ? 



32 THE CONDITION OF LABOB. 

Let me dwell on the words of your Holiness, ''Nature^ 
therefore, owes to man a storehouse that shall never fail." 
By Nature you mean God. Thus your thought, that in 
creating us, God himself has incurred an obligation to 
provide us with a storehouse that shall never fail, is the 
same as is thus expressed and carried to its irresistible 
conclusion by the Bishop of Meath : 

God was perfectly free in the act by wMcli He created us ; but 
having created us he bound himself by that act to provide us with 
the means necessary for our subsistence. The land is the only source 
of this kind now known to us. The land, therefore, of every country 
is the common property of the people of that country, because its real 
owner, the Creator who made it, has transferred it as a voluntary 
gift to them. '' Terram autem dedit JUiishominum." Now, as every 
individual in that country is a creature and child of God, and as all 
his creatures are equal in his sight, any settlement of the land of a 
country that would exclude the humblest man in that country from 
his share of the common inheritance would be not only an injustice 
and a wrong to that man, but, moreover, be an impious resistance 

TO THE BENEVOLENT INTENTIONS OP HIS CREATOR. 

3. That private property in land deprives no one of the use 
of land. (8.) 

Your own statement that land is the inexhaustible 
storehouse that God owes to man must have aroused in 
your Holiness's mind an uneasy questioning of its appro- 
priation as private property, for, as though to reassure 
yourself, you proceed to argue that its ownership by 
some will not injure others. You say in substance, that 
even though divided among private owners the earth 
does not cease to minister to the needs of all, since those 
who do not possess the soil can by selling their labor 
obtain in payment the produce of the land. 

Suppose that to your Holiness as a judge of morals 
one should put this case of conscience : 

I am one of several children to whom our father left a field abun- 
dant for our support. As he assigned no part of it to any one of us 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XHI. 33 

in particular, leaving the limits of our separate possession to be fixed 
by ourselves, I being the eldest took the whole field in exclusive 
ownership. But in doing so I have not deprived my brothers of 
their support from it, for I have let them work for me on it, paying 
them from the produce as much wages as I would have had to pay 
strangers. Is there any reason why my conscience should not be 
clear? 

What would be your answer ? Would you not tell him 
that he was in mortal sin, and that his excuse added to 
his guilt? Would you not call on him to make restitu- 
tion and to do penance ? 

Or, suppose that as a temporal prince your Holiness 
were ruler of a rainless land, such as Egypt, where there 
were no springs or brooks, their want being supplied by 
a bountiful river like the Nile. Supposing that having 
sent a number of your subjects to make fruitful this 
land, bidding them do justly and prosper, you were told 
that some of them had set up a claim of ownership in 
the river, refusing the others a drop of water, except as 
they bought it of them ; and that thus they had become 
rich without work, while the others, though working 
hard, were so impoverished by paying for water as to be 
hardly able to exist ? 

Would not your indignation wax hot when this was told ? 

Suppose that then the river-owners should send to you 
and thus excuse their action : 

The river, though divided among private owners, ceases not 
thereby to minister to the needs of aU, for there is no one who drinks 
who does not drink of the water of the river. Those who do not pos- 
sess the water of the river contribute their labor to get it ; so that it 
may be truly said that all water is supplied either from one's own 
river, or from some laborious industry which is paid for either in the 
water, or in that which is exchanged for the water. 

Would the indignation of your Holiness be abated? 
Would it not wax fiercer yet for the insult to your intel- 
ligence of this excuse ? 



34 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

I do not need more formally to show your Holiness 
that between utterly depriving a man of God's gifts and 
depriving him of God's gifts unless he will buy them, is 
merely the difference between the robber who leaves his 
victim to die and the robber who puts him to ransom. But I 
would liie to point out how your statement that " the earth, 
though divided among private owners, ceases not thereby 
to minister to the needs of all " overlooks the largest facts. 

From your palace of the Vatican the eye may rest on 
the expanse of the Campagna, where the pious toil of 
religious congregations and the efforts of the state are 
only now beginning to make it possible for men to live. 
Once that expanse was tilled by thriving husbandmen 
and dotted with smiling hamlets. What for centuries 
has condemned it to desertion? History tells us. It 
was private property in landj the growth of the great 
estates of which Pliny saw that ancient Italy was perish- 
ing 5 the cause that, by bringing failure to the crop of 
men, let in the Goths and Vandals, gave Roman Britain 
to the worship of Odin and Thor, and in what were once 
the rich and populous provinces of the East shivered the 
thinned ranks and palsied arms of the legions on the 
simitars of Mohammedan hordes, and in the sepulcher 
of our Lord and in the Church of St. Sophia trampled 
the cross to rear the crescent ! 

If you will go to Scotland, you may see great tracts 
that under the Gaelic tenure, which recognized the right 
of each to a foothold in the soil, bred sturdy men, but that 
now, under the recognition of private property in land, are 
given up to wild animals. If you go to Ireland, your Bish- 
ops wiU show you, on lands where now only beasts graze, 
the traces of hamlets that, when they were young priests, 
were filled with honest, kindly, religious people.* 

* Let any one wlio wishes visit this diocese and see with his own 
eyes the vast and boundless extent of the fairest land in Europe 
that has been ruthlessly depopulated since the commencement /of the 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XHI. 35 

If you will come to the United States, you will find in 
a land wide enough and rich enough to support in com- 
fort the whole population of Europe, the growth of a 
sentiment that looks with evil eye on immigration, 
because the artificial scarcity that results from private 
property in land makes it seem as if there is not room 
enough and work enough for those already here. 

Or go to the Antipodes, and in Australia, as in Eng- 
land, you may see that private property in land is oper- 
ating to leave the land barren and to crowd the bulk of 
the population into great cities. Go wherever you please 
where the forces loosed by modern invention are begin- 
ning to be felt and you may see that private property in 
land is the curse, denounced by the prophet, that prompts 
men to lay field to field till they '^ alone dwell in the 
midst of the earth." 

To the mere materialist this is sin and shame. Shall 
we to whom this world is Grod's world— we who hold that 
man is called to this life only as a prelude to a higher 
life— shall we defend it? 

4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership in the 
land itself. (9-10.) 

Your Holiness next contends that industry expended 
on land gives a right to ownership of the land, iand that 
the improvement of land creates benefits indistinguishable 
and inseparable from the land itself. 

This contention, if valid, could only justify the owner- 
ship of land by those who expend industrj^ on it. It 
would not justify private property in land as it exists. 

present century, and wMch is now abandoned to a loneliness and 
solitude more depressing than that of the prairie or the wilderness. 
Thus has this land system actually exercised the power of life and 
death on a vast scale, for which there is no parallel even in the dark 
records of slavery. —^Mqp Nulty^s Letter to the Clergy and Laity of 
the Diocese of Meath, 



36 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

On the contrary, it would justify a gigantic no-rent 
declaration that would take land from those who now 
legally own it, the landlords, and turn it over to the 
tenants and laborers. And if it also be that improve- 
ments cannot be distinguished and separated from the 
land itself, how could the landlords claim consideration 
even for improvements they had made ? 

But your Holiness cannot mean what your words 
imply. What you really mean, I take it, is that the 
original justification and title of landownership is in the 
expenditure of labor on it. But neither can this justify 
private property in land as it exists. For is it not all but 
universally true that existing land titles do not come 
from use, but from force or fraud ? 

Take Italy ! Is it not true that the greater part of the 
land of Italy is held by those who so far from ever having 
expended industry on it have been mere appropriators of 
the industry of those who have? Is this not also true 
of Great Britain and of other countries? Even in the 
United States, where the forces of concentration have 
not yet had time fuUy to operate and there has been 
some attempt to give land to users, it is probably true 
to-day that the greater part of the land is held by those 
who neither use it nor propose to use it themselves, but 
merely hold it to compel others to pay them for permis- 
sion to use it. 

And if industry give ownership to land what are the 
limits of this ownership? If a man may acquire the 
ownership of several square miles of land by grazing 
sheep on it, does this give to him and his heirs the 
ownership of the same land when it is found to contain 
rich mines, or when by the growth of population and the 
progress of society it is needed for farming, for garden- 
ing, for the close occupation of a great city? Is it on 
the rights given by the industry of those who first used 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 37 

it for grazing cows or growing potatoes that you would 
found the title to the land now covered by the city of New 
York and having a value of thousands of millions of dollars ? 
But your contention is not valid. Industry expended 
on land gives ownership in the fruits of that industry, 
but not in the land itself, just as industry expended on 
the ocean would give a right of ownership to the fish 
taken by it, but not a right of ownership in the ocean. 
Nor yet is it true that private ownership of land is neces- 
sary to secure the fruits of labor on land ; nor does the 
improvement of land create benefits indistinguishable 
and inseparable from the land itself. That secure pos- 
session is necessary to the use and improvement of land 
I have already explained, but that ownership is not 
necessary is shown by the fact that in all civilized coun- 
tries land owned by one person is cultivated and 
improved by other persons. Most of the cultivated land 
in the British Islands, as in Italy and other countries, is 
cultivated not by owners but by tenants. And so the 
costliest buildings are erected by those who are not 
owners of the land, but who have from the owner a mere 
right of possession for a time on condition of certain 
payments. Nearly the whole of London has been built 
in this way, and in New York, Chicago, Denver, San 
Francisco, Sydney and Melbourne, as weU as in conti- 
nental cities, the owners of many of the largest edifices 
will be found to be different persons from the owners of 
the ground. So far from the value of improvements 
being inseparable from the value of land, it is in indi- 
vidual transactions constantly separated. For instance, 
one-half of the land on which the immense Grand Pacific 
Hotel in Chicago stands was recently separately sold, 
and in Ceylon it is a not infrequent occurrence for one 
person to own a fruit-tree and another to own the ground 
in which it is implanted. 



38 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

There is, indeed, no improvement of land, whether it 
be clearing, plowing, manuring, cultivating, the digging 
of cellars, the opening of wells or the building of houses, 
that so long as its usefulness continues does not have a 
value clearly distinguishable from the value of the land. 
For land having such improvements will always sell or 
rent for more than similar land without them. 

If, therefore, the state levy a tax equal to what the 
land irrespective of improvement would bring, it will 
take the benefits of mere ownership, but will leave the 
full benefits of use and improvement, which the prevail- 
ing system does not do. And since the holder, who 
would still in form continue to be the owner, could at 
any time give or sell both possession and improvements, 
subject to future assessment by the state, on the value of 
the land alone, he will be perfectly free to retain or dis- 
pose of the full amount of property that the exertion of 
his labor or the investment of his capital has attached to 
or stored up in the land. 

Thus, what we propose would secure, as it is impossible 
in any other way to secure, what you properly say is just 
and right— "that the results of labor should belong to 
him who has labored." But private property in land— to 
allow the holder without adequate payment to the state 
to take for himself the benefit of the value that attaches 
to land with social growth and improvement— does take 
the results of labor from him who has labored, does turn 
over the fruits of one man's labor to be enjoyed by 
another. For labor, as the active factor, is the producer 
of all wealth. Mere ownership produces nothing. A 
man might own a world, but so sure is the decree that 
"by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread," that 
without labor he could not get a meal or provide himself 
a garment. Hence, when the owners of land, by virtue 
of their ownership and without laboring themselves, get 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 39 

the products of labor in abundance, tbese things must 
come from the labor of others, must be the fruits of 
others' sweat, taken from those who have a right to them 
and enjoyed by those who have no right to them. 

The only utility of private ownership of land as distin- 
guished from possession is the evil utility of giving to 
the owner products of labor he does not earn. For until 
land will yield to its owner some return beyond that of 
the labor and capital he expends on it — that is to say, 
until by sale or rental he can without expenditure of 
labor obtain from it products of labor, ownership 
amounts to no more than security of possession, and has 
no value. Its importance and value begin only when, 
either in the present or prospectively, it will yield a 
revenue— that is to say, will enable the owner as owner 
to obtain products of labor without exertion on his part, 
and thus to enjoy the results of others' labor. 

What largely keeps men from realizing the robbery 
involved in private property in land is that in the most 
striking cases the robbery is not of individuals, but of 
the community. For, as I have before explained, it is 
impossible for rent in the economic sense— that value 
which attaches to land by reason of social growth and 
improvement— to go to the user. It can go only to the 
owner or to the community. Thus those who pay enor- 
mous rents for the use of land in such centers as London 
or New York are not individually injured. Individually 
they get a return for what they pay, and must feel that 
they have no better right to the use of such peculiarly 
advantageous localities without paying for it than have 
thousands of others. And so, not thinking or not caring 
for the interests of the community, they make no objec- 
tion to the system. 

It recently came to light in New York that a man hav- 
ing no title whatever had been for years collecting rents 



40 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

on a piece of land tliat the growth of the city had made 
very valuable. Those who paid these rents had never 
stopped to ask whether he had any right to them. They 
felt that they had no right to land that so many others 
wonld like to have, without paying for it, and did not 
think of; or did not care for, the rights of all. 

5. That private property in land lias the support of the 
common opinion of mankind, and has conduced to peace and 
tranquillityj and that it is sanctioned hy Divine Law. (11.) 

Even were it true that the common opinion of man- 
kind has sanctioned private property in land, this would 
no more prove its justice than the once universal practice 
of the known world would have proved the justice of 
slavery. 

But it is not true. Examination will show that wher- 
ever we can trace them the first perceptions of mankind 
have always recognized the equality of right to land, and 
that when individual possession became necessary to 
secure the right of ownership in things produced by 
labor some method of securing equality, sufficient in the 
existing state of social development, was adopted. Thus, 
among some peoples, land used for cultivation was peri- 
odically divided, land used for pasturage and wood being 
held in common. Among others, every family was per- 
mitted to hold what land it needed for a dwelling and 
for cultivation, but the moment that such use and culti- 
vation stopped any one else could step in and take it on 
like tenure. Of the same nature were the land laws of 
the Mosaic code. The land, first fairly divided among 
the people, was made inalienable by the provision of the 
jubilee, under which, if sold, it reverted every fiftieth 
year to the children of its original possessors. 

Private property in land as we know it, the attaching 
to land of the same right of ownership that justly 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 41 

attaches to the products of labor, has never grown up 
anywhere save by usurpation or force. Like slavery, it 
is the result of war. It comes to us of the modern world 
from your ancestors, the Romans, whose civilization it 
corrupted and whose empire it destroyed. 

It made with the freer spirit of the northern peoples 
the combination of the feudal system, in which, though 
subordination was substituted for equality, there was still 
a rough recognition of the principle of common rights in 
land. A fief was a trust, and to enjoyment was annexed 
some obligation. The sovereign, the representative of 
the whole people, was the only owner of land. Of him, 
immediately or mediately, held tenants, whose possession 
involved duties or payments, which, though rudely and 
imperfectly, embodied the idea that we would carry out 
in the single tax, of taking land values for public uses. 
The crown lands maintained the sovereign and the civil 
list ; the church lands defrayed the cost of public worship 
and instruction, of the relief of the sick, the destitute and 
the wayworn; while the military tenures provided for 
public defense and bore the costs of war. A fourth and 
very large portion of the land remained in common, the 
people of the neighborhood being free to pasture it, cut 
wood on it, or put it to other common uses. 

In this partial yet substantial recognition of common 
rights to land is to be found the reason why, in a time 
when the industrial arts were rude, wars frequent, and 
the great discoveries and inventions of our time unthought 
of, the condition of the laborer was devoid of that grind- 
ing poverty which despite our marvelous advances now 
exists. Speaking of England, the highest authority on 
such subjects, the late Professor Thorold Rogers, declares 
that in the thirteenth century there was no class so poor, 
so helpless, so pressed and degraded as are millions of 
Englishmen in our boasted nineteenth century ; and that, 



42 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

save in times of actual famine, there was no laborer so 
poor as to fear that his wife and children might come to 
want even were he taken from them. Dark and rnde in 
many respects as they were, these were the times when 
the cathedrals and churches and religious houses whose 
ruins yet excite our admiration were built 5 the times 
when England had no national debt, no poor law, no 
standing army, no hereditary paupers, no thousands and 
thousands of human beings rising in the morning with- 
out knowing where they might lay their heads at night. 

With the decay of the feudal system, the system of 
private property in land that had destroyed Rome was 
extended. As to England, it may briefly be said that the 
crown lands were for the most part given away to favor- 
ites; that the church lands were parceled among his 
courtiers by Henry VIII., and in Scotland grasped by 
the nobles ; that the military dues were finally remitted 
in the seventeenth century, and taxation on consumption 
substituted; and that by a process beginning with the 
Tudors and extending to our own time all but a mere 
fraction of the commons were inclosed by the greater 
landowners; while the same private ownership of land 
was extended over Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, 
partly by the sword and partly by bribery of the chiefs. 
Even the military dues, had they been commuted, not 
remitted, would to-day have more than sufficed to pay all 
public expenses without one penny of other taxation. 

Of the New World, whose institutions but continue 
those of Europe, it is only necessary to say that to the 
parceling out of land in great tracts is due the backward- 
ness and turbulence of Spanish America; that to the 
large plantations of the Southern States of the Union 
was due the persistence of slavery there, and that the 
more northern settlements showed the earlier English 
feeling, land being fairly well divided and the attempts 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XHI. 43 

to establish manorial estates coming to little or nothing. 
In this lies the secret of the more vigorous growth of 
the Northern States. But the idea that land was to be 
treated as private property had been thoroughly estab- 
lished in English thought before the colonial period 
ended, and it has been so treated by the United States 
and by the several States. And though land was at first 
sold cheaply, and then given to actual settlers, it was 
also sold in large quantities to speculators, given away 
in great tracts for railroads and other purposes, until 
now the public domain of the United States, which a 
generation ago seemed illimitable, has practically gone. 
And this, as the experience of other countries shows, is 
the natural result in a growing community of making 
land private property. When the possession of land 
means the gain of unearned wealth, the strong and 
unscrupulous will secure it. But when, as we propose, 
economic rent^ the "unearned increment of wealth," is 
taken by the state for the use of the community, then 
land will pass into the hands of users and remain there, 
since no matter how great its value, its possession will be 
profitable only to users. 

As to private property in land having conduced to the 
peace and tranquillity of human life, it is not necessary 
more than to allude to the notorious fact that the struggle 
for land has been the prolific source of wars and of lawsuits, 
while it is the poverty engendered by private property in 
land that makes the prison and the workhouse the un- 
failing attributes of what we call Christian civilization. 

Your Holiness intimates that the Divine Law gives its 
sanction to the private ownership of land, quoting from 
Deuteronomy, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's 
wife, nor his house, nor his field, nor his man-servant, 
nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any- 
thing which is his." 



44= THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

If, as your Holiness conveys, this inclusion of the 
words, " nor his field," is to be taken as sanctioning pri- 
vate property in land as it exists to-day, then, but with 
far greater force, must the words, '^ his man-servant, nor 
his maid-servant," be taken to sanction chattel slavery; 
for it is evident from other provisions of the same code 
that these terms referred both to bondsmen for a term of 
years and to perpetual slaves. But the word "field" 
involves the idea of use and improvement, to which the 
right of possession and ownership does attach without 
recognition of property in the land itself. And that this 
reference to the " field " is not a sanction of private prop- 
erty in land as it exists to-day is proved by the fact that 
the Mosaic code expressly denied such unqualified owner- 
ship in land, and with the declaration, ''the land also 
shall not be sold forever, because it is mine, and you are 
strangers and sojourners with me," provided for its rever- 
sion every fiftieth year; thus, in a way adapted to the 
primitive industrial conditions of the time, securing to 
all of the chosen people a foothold in the soil. 

Nowhere in fact throughout the Scriptures can the 
slightest justification be found for the attaching to land 
of the same right of property that justly attaches to the 
things produced by labor. Everywhere is it treated as 
the free bounty of God, "the land which the Lord thy 
God giveth thee." 

6. That fathers should provide for their children and that 
private property in land is necessary to enable them to do so. 
(14-17.) 

With all that your Holiness has to say of the sacred- 
ness of the family relation we are in full accord. But 
how the obligation of the father to the child can justify 
private property in land we cannot see. You reason that 
private property in land is necessary to the discharge of 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 45 

the duty of the father, and is therefore requisite and 
just, because— 

It is a most sacred law of nature that a father must provide food 
and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten ; and, similarly, 
nature dictates that a man's children, who carry on, as it were, and 
continue his own personality, should be provided by him with aU 
that is needful to enable them honorably to keep themselves from 
want and misery in the uncertainties of this mortal life. Now, in 
no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of 
profitable property, which he can transmit to his children by inheri- 
tance. (14.) 

Thanks to Him who has bound the generations of men 
together by a provision that brings the tenderest love to 
greet our entrance into the world and soothes our exit 
with filial piety, it is both the duty and the joy of the 
father to care for the child till its powers mature, and 
afterwards in the natural order it becomes the duty and 
privilege of the child to be the stay of the parent. This 
is the natural reason for that relation of marriage, the 
groundwork of the sweetest, tenderest and purest of 
human joys, which the Catholic Church has guarded with 
such unremitting vigilance. 

We do, for a few years, need the providence of our 
fathers after the flesh. But how small, how transient, 
how narrow is this need, as compared with our constant 
need for the providence of Him in whom we live, move 
and have our being— Our Father who art in Heaven! 
It is to him, " the giver of every good and perfect gift," 
and not to our fathers after the flesh, that Christ taught 
us to pray, " Give us this day our daily bread." And how 
true it is that it is through him that the generations of 
men exist ! Let the mean temperature of the earth rise 
or fall a few degrees, an amount as nothing compared 
with differences produced in our laboratories, and man- 
kind would disappear as ice disappears under a tropical 



46 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

sun, woiild fall as the leaves fall at the touch of frost. 
Or, let for two or three seasons the earth refuse her in- 
crease, and how many of our millions would remain alive 1 

The duty of fathers to transmit to their children prof- 
itable property that will enable them to keep themselves 
from want and misery in the uncertainties of this mortal 
life ! What is not possible cannot be a duty. And how 
is it possible for fathers to do that ? Your Holiness has 
not considered how mankind really lives from hand to 
mouth, getting each day its daily bread j how little one 
generation does or can leave another. It is doubtful if 
the wealth of the civilized world all told amounts to any- 
thing like as much as one year's labor, while it is certain 
that if labor were to stop and men had to rely on exist- 
ing accumulation, it would be only a few days ere in the 
richest countries pestilence and famine would stalk. 

The profitable property your Holiness refers to, is 
private property in land. Now profitable land, as all 
economists will agree, is land superior to the land that 
the ordinary man can get. It is land that will yield an 
income to the owner as owner, and therefore that will 
permit the owner to appropriate the products of labor 
without doing labor, its profitableness to the individual 
involving the robbery of other individuals. It is there- 
fore possible only for some fathers to leave their children 
profitable land. What therefore your Holiness practi- 
cally declares is, that it is the duty of all fathers to 
struggle to leave their children what only the few pecu- 
liarly strong, lucky or unscrupulous can leave ; and that, 
a something that involves the robbery of others— their 
deprivation of the material gifts of God. 

This anti-Christian doctrine has been long in practice 
throughout the Christian world. What are its results ? 

Are they not the very evils set forth in your Encyc- 
lical? Are they not, so far from enabling men to keep 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xm. 47 

themselves from want and misery in the uncertainties of 
this mortal life, to condemn the great masses of men to 
want and misery that the natural conditions of our 
mortal life do not entail j to want and misery deeper and 
more wide-spread than exist among heathen savages? 
Under the regime of private property in land and in the 
richest countries not five per cent, of fathers are able at 
their death to leave anything substantial to their chil- 
dren, and probably a large majority do not leave enough 
to bury them ! Some few children are left by their 
fathers richer than it is good for them to be, but the vast 
majority not only are left nothing by their fathers, but 
by the system that makes land private property are 
deprived of the bounty of their Heavenly Father; are 
compelled to sue others for permission to live and to 
work, and to toil all their lives for a pittance that often 
does not enable them to escape starvation and pauperism. 
What your Holiness is actually, though of course inad- 
vertently, urging, is that earthly fathers should assume 
the functions of the Heavenly Father. It is not the 
business of one generation to provide the succeeding 
generation "with all that is needful to enable them 
honorably to keep themselves from want and misery." 
That is God's business. We no more create our children 
than we create our fathers. It is God who is the Creator 
of each succeeding generation as fully as of the one that 
preceded it. And, to recall your own words (7), "Nature 
[God], therefore, owes to man a storehouse that shall 
never fail, the daily supply of his daily wants. And this 
he finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth." 
What you are now assuming is, that it is the duty of 
men to provide for the wants of their children by appro- 
priating this storehouse and depriving other men's chil- 
dren of the unfailing supply that God has provided 
for all. 



48 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

The duty of the father to the child— the duty possible 
to all fathers ! Is it not so to conduct himself, so to 
nurture and teach it, that it shall come to manhood with 
a sound body, well-developed mind, habits of virtue, piety 
and industr}^, and in a state of society that shall give it 
and all others free access to the bounty of God, the 
providence of the All-Father ? 

In doing this the father would be doing more to secure 
his children from want and misery than is possible now 
to the richest of fathers— as much more as the provi- 
dence of God surpasses that of man. For the justice of 
God laughs at the efforts of men to circumvent it, and 
the subtle law that binds humanity together poisons the 
rich in the sufferings of the poor. Even the few who 
are able in the general struggle to leave their children 
wealth that they fondly think will keep them from want 
and misery in the uncertainties of this mortal life— do 
they succeed? Does experience show that it is a benefit 
to a child to place him above his fellows and enable him 
to think God's law of labor is not for him ? Is not such 
wealth oftener a curse than a blessing, and does not its 
expectation often destroy filial love and bring dissensions 
and heartburnings into families ! And how far and how 
long are even the richest and strongest able to exempt 
their children from the common lot? Nothing is more 
certain than that the blood of the masters of the world 
flows to-day in lazzaroni and that the descendants of 
kings and princes tenant slums and workhouses. 

But in the state of society we strive for, where the 
monopoly and waste of God's bounty would be done 
away with and the fruits of labor would go to the 
laborer, it would be within the ability of all to make 
more than a comfortable living with reasonable labor. 
And for those who might be crippled or incapacitated, or 
deprived of their natural protectors and breadwinners, 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xm. 49 

the most ample provision could be made out of that great 
and increasing fund with which God in his law of rent 
has provided society— not as a matter of niggardly and 
degrading alms, but as a matter of right, as the assur- 
ance which in a Christian state society owes to all its 
members. 

Thus it is that the duty of the father, the obligation 
to the child, instead of giving any support to private 
property in land, utterly condemns it, urging us by the 
most powerful considerations to abolish it in the simple 
and efficacious way of the single tax. 

This duty of the father, this obligation to children, is 
not confined to those who have actually children of their 
own, but rests on all of us who have come to the powers 
and responsibilities of manhood. 

For did not Christ set a little child in the midst of the 
disciples, saying to them that the angels of such little 
ones always behold the face of his Father j saying to 
them that it were better for a man to hang a millstone 
about his neck and plunge into the uttermost depths of 
the sea than to injure such a little one ? 

And what to-day is the result of private property in 
land in the richest of so-called Christian countries? Is 
it not that young people fear to marry; that married 
people fear to have children; that children are driven 
out of life from sheer want of proper nourishment and 
care, or compelled to toil when they ought to be at school 
or at play ; that great numbers of those who attain matu- 
rity enter it with under-nourished bodies, overstrained 
nerves, undeveloped minds— under conditions that fore- 
doom them, not merely to suffering, but to crime ; that 
fit them in advance for the prison and the brothel ? 

If your Holiness will consider these things we are con- 
fident that instead of defending private property in land 
you wiU condemn it with anathema ! 



50 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

7. That the private ownership of land stimulates industry^ 
increases wealthy and attaches men to the soil and to their 
country. (51.) 

The idea, as expressed by Arthur Young, that *Hhe 
magic of property turns barren sands to gold" springs 
from the confusion of ownership with possession, of 
which I have before spoken, that attributes to private 
property in land what is due to security of the products 
of labor. It is needless for me again to point out that 
the change we propose, the taxation for public uses of 
land values, or economic rent, and the abolition of other 
taxes, would give to the user of land far greater security 
for the fruits of his labor than the present system and far 
greater permanence of possession. Nor is it necessary 
further to show how it would give homes to those who 
are now homeless and bind men to their country. For 
under it every one who wanted a piece of land for a 
home or for productive use could get it without purchase 
price and hold it even without tax, since the tax we pro- 
pose would not fall on all land, nor even on all land in 
use, but only on land better than the poorest land in use, 
and is in reality not a tax at all, but merely a return to 
the state for the use of a valuable privilege. And even 
those who from circumstances or occupation did not 
wish to make permanent use of land would still have an 
equal interest with all others in the land of their country 
and in the general prosperity. 

But I should like your Holiness to consider how utterly 
unnatural is the condition of the masses in the richest 
and most progressive of Christian countries ; how large 
bodies of them live in habitations in which a rich man 
would not ask his dog to dwell j how the great majority 
have no homes from which they are not liable on the 
slightest misfortune to be evicted; how numbers have 
no homes at all, but must seek what shelter chance or 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 51 

charity offers. I slioiild like to ask your Holiness to 
consider how the great majority of men in such countries 
have no interest whatever in what they are taught to call 
tJieir native land, for which they are told that on occa- 
sions it is their duty to fight or to die. What right, for 
instance, have the majority of your countrymen in the 
land of their birth? Can they live in Italy outside of a 
prison or a poorhouse except as they buy the privilege 
from some of the exclusive owners of Italy ? Cannot an 
Englishman, an American, an Arab or a Japanese do as 
much? May not what was said centuries ago by Tibe- 
rius Gracchus be said to-day: ^^Men of Rome! you are 
called the lords of the world, yet have no right to a square 
foot of its soil! The tvild beasts have their dens, hut the 
soldiers of Italy have only water and air! " 

What is true of Italy is true of the civilized world— is 
becoming increasingly true. It is the inevitable effect 
as civilization progresses of private property in land. 

8. That the right to possess private property in land is 
from nature, not from man; that the state has no right to 
abolish it, and that to taJce the value of landownership in 
taxation would he unjust and cruel to the private owner. (51.) 

This, like much else that your Holiness says, is masked 
in the use of the indefinite terms "private property" and 
" private owner "—a want of precision in the use of words 
that has doubtless aided in the confusion of your own 
thought. But the context leaves no doubt that by pri- 
vate property you mean private property in land, and by 
private owner, the private owner of land. 

The contention, thus made, that private property in 
land is from nature, not from man, has no other basis 
than the confounding of ownership with possession and 
the ascription to property in land of what belongs to its 
contradictory, property in the proceeds of labor. You 



52 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

do not attempt to show for it any other basis, njr has 
any one else ever attempted to do so. That private, prop- 
erty in the products of labor is from nature is clear, for 
nature gives such things to labor and to labor alone. Of 
every article of this kind, we know that it came into 
being as nature's response to the exertion of an individ- 
ual man or of individual men— given by nature directly 
and exclusively to him or to them. Thus there inheres 
in such things a right of private property, which origi- 
nates from and goes back to the source of ownership, the 
maker of the thing. This right is anterior to the state 
and superior to its enactments, so that, as we hold, it is 
a violation of natural right and an injustice to the private 
owner for the state to tax the processes and products of 
labor. They do not belong to Csesar. They are things 
that Grod, of whom nature is but an expression, gives to 
those who apply for them in the way he has appointed— 
by labor. 

But who will dare trace the individual ownership of 
land to any grant from the Maker of land? What does 
nature give to such ownership ? how does she in any way 
recognize it? Will any one show from difference of 
form or feature, of stature or complexion, from dissec- 
tion of their bodies or analysis of their powers and needs, 
that one man was intended by nature to own land and 
another to live on it as his tenant ? That which derives 
its existence from man and passes away like him, which 
is indeed but the evanescent expression of his labor, man 
may hold and transfer as the exclusive property of the 
individual; but how can such individual ownership 
attach to land, which existed before man was, and which 
continues to exist while the generations of men come and 
go— the unfailing storehouse that the Creator gives to 
man for " the daily supply of his daily wants " ? 

Clearly, the private ownership of land is from the 
state, not from nature. Thus, not merely can no objee- 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 53 

tion be made on tlie score of morals when it is proposed 
that the state shall abolish it altogether, but insomuch 
as it is a violation of natural right, its existence involving 
a gross injustice on the part of the state, an "impious 
violation of the benevolent intention of the Creator," it 
is a moral duty that the state so abolish it. 

So far from there being anything unjust in taking the 
full value of landownership for the use of the community, 
the real injustice is in leaving it in private hands— an 
injustice that amounts to robbery and murder. 

And when your Holiness shall see this I have no fear 
that you will listen for one moment to the impudent plea 
that before the community can take what God intended 
it to take— before men who have been disinherited of 
their natural rights can be restored to them, the present 
owners of land shall first be compensated. 

For not only will you see that the single tax will directly 
and largely benefit small landowners, whose interests as 
laborers and capitalists are much greater than their inter- 
ests as landowners, and that though the great landowners 
— or rather the propertied class in general among whom 
the profits of landownership are really divided through 
mortgages, rent-charges, etc.— would relatively lose, they 
too would be absolute gainers in the increased prosperity 
and improved morals ; but more quickly, more strongly, 
more peremptorily than from any calculation of gains or 
losses would your duty as a man, your faith as a Chris- 
tian, forbid you to listen for one moment to any such 
paltering with right and wrong. 

Where the state takes some land for public uses it is 
only just that those whose land is taken should be com- 
pensated, otherwise some landowners would be treated 
more harshly than others. But where, by a measure 
affecting all alike, rent is appropriated for the benefit of 
all, there can be no claim to compensation. Compensa- 
tion in such case would be a continuance of the same 



54 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

injustice in another form — the giving to landowners in 
the shape of interest of what they before got as rent. 
Your Holiness knows that justice and injustice are not 
thus to be juggled with, and when you fully realize that 
land is really the storehouse that God owes to all his 
children, you will no more listen to any demand for 
compensation for restoring it to them than Moses would 
have listened to a demand that Pharaoh should be com- 
pensated before letting the children of Israel go. 

Compensated for what ? For giving up what has been 
unjustly taken? The demand of landowners for com- 
pensation is not that. We do not seek to spoil the 
Egyptians. "We do not ask that what has been unjustly 
taken from laborers shall be restored. We are willing 
that bygones should be bygones and to leave dead 
wrongs to bury their dead. We propose to let those 
who by the past appropriation of land values have taken 
the fruits of labor to retain what they have thus got. 
We merely propose that for the future such robbery of 
labor shall cease— that for the future, not for the past, 
landholders shall pay to the community the rent that to 
the community is justly due. 



III. 

I have said enough to show your Holiness the injustice 
into which you fall in classing us, who in seeking virtu- 
ally to abolish private property in land seek more fully 
to secure the true rights of property, with those whom 
you speak of as socialists, who wish to make aU property 
common. But you also do injustice to the socialists. 

There are many, it is true, who feeling bitterly the 
monstrous wrongs of the present distribution of wealth 
are animated only by a blind hatred of the rich and a 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 55 

fierce desire to destroy existing social adjustments. This 
class is indeed only less dangerous than those who pro- 
claim that no social improvement is needed or is possible. 
But it is not fair to confound with them those who, 
however mistakenly, propose definite schemes of remedy. 

The socialists, as I understand them, and as the term 
has come to apply to anything like a definite theory and 
not to be vaguely and improperly used to include all who 
desire social improvement, do not, as you imply, seek the 
abolition of aU private property. Those who do this are 
properly called communists. What the socialists seek is 
the state assumption of capital (in which they vaguely 
and erroneously include land), or more properly speak- 
ing, of large capitals, and state management and direction 
of at least the larger operations of industry. In this 
way they hope to abolish interest, which they regard 
as a wrong and an evil 5 to do away with the gains of 
exchangers, speculators, contractors and middlemen, 
which they regard as waste; to do away with the wage 
system and secure general cooperation; and to prevent 
-competition, which they deem the fundamental cause of 
the impoverishment of labor. The more moderate of 
them, without going so far, go in the same direction, and 
seek some remedy or palliation of the worst forms of 
poverty by government regulation. The essential char- 
acter of socialism is that it looks to the extension of the 
functions of the state for the remedy of social evils; 
that it would substitute regulation and direction for com- 
petition ; and intelligent control by organized society for 
the free play of individual desire and effort. 

Though not usually classed as socialists, both the 
trades-unionists and the protectionists have the same 
essential character. The trades-unionists seek the 
increase of wages, the reduction of working-hours and 
the general improvement in the condition of wage- 



56 THE CONDITION OF LAB0)5t- 

workers, by organizing them into guilds or associations 
which shall fix the rates at which they will sell their 
labor J shall deal as one body with employers in case of 
dispute; shall use on occasion their necessary weapon, 
the strike ; and shall accumulate funds for such purposes 
and for the purpose of assisting members when on a 
strike, or (sometimes) when out of employment. The 
protectionists seek by governmental prohibitions or taxes 
on imports to regulate the industry and control the 
exchanges of each country, so as, they imagine, to diver- 
sify home industries and prevent the competition of 
people of other countries. 

At the opposite extreme are the anarchists, a term 
which, though frequently applied to mere violent destruc- 
tionists, refers also to those who, seeing the many evils 
of too much government, regard government in itself as 
evil, and believe that in the absence of coercive power 
the mutual interests of men would secure voluntarily 
what cooperation is needed. 

Differing from all these are those for whom I would 
speak. Believing that the rights of true property are 
sacred, we would regard forcible communism as robbery 
that would bring destruction. But we would not be dis- 
posed to deny that voluntary communism might be the 
highest possible state of which men can conceive. Nor 
do we say that it cannot be possible for mankind to 
attain it, since among the early Christians and among 
the religious orders of the Catholic Church we have 
examples of communistic societies on a small scale. St. 
Peter and St. Paul, St. Thomas of Aquin and Fra Angel- 
ico, the illustrious orders of the Carmelites and Francis- 
cans, the Jesuits, whose heroism carried the cross among 
the most savage tribes of American forests, the societies 
that wherever your communion is known have deemed 
no work of mercy too dangerous or too repellent— were 



OPEN LETTEE TO POPE LEO XIH. 57 

or are communists. Knowing these things we cannot 
take it on ourselves to say that a social condition may 
not be possible in which an all-embracing love shall have 
taken the place of all other motives. But we see that 
communism is only possible where there exists a general 
and intense religious faith, and we see that such a state 
can be reached only through a state of justice. For 
before a man can be a saint he must first be an honest 
man. 

With both anarchists and socialists, we, who for want 
of a better term have come to call ourselves single-tax 
men, fundamentally differ. We regard them as erring 
in opposite directions— the one in ignoring the social 
nature of man, the other in ignoring his individual 
nature. While we see that man is primarily an individ- 
ual, and that nothing but evil has come or can come 
from the interference by the state with things that belong 
to individual action, we also see that he is a social being, 
or, as Aristotle called him, a political animal, and that 
the state is requisite to social advance, having an indis- 
pensable place in the natural order. Looking on the 
bodily organism as the analogue of the social organism, 
and on the proper functions of the state as akin to those 
that in the human organism are discharged by the con- 
scious intelligence, while the play of individual impulse 
and interest performs functions akin to those discharged 
in the bodily organism by the unconscious instincts and 
involuntary motions, the anarchists seem to us like men 
who would try to get along without heads and the social- 
ists like men who would try to rule the wonderfully 
complex and delicate internal relations of their frames 
by conscious will. 

The philosophical anarchists of whom I speak are few 
in number, and of little practical importance. It is with 
socialism in its various phases that we have to do battle. 



58 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

"Witli tlie socialists we have some points of agreement, 
for we recognize fully the social nature of man and 
believe that all monopolies should be held and governed 
by the state. In these, and in directions where the 
general health, knowledge, comfort and convenience 
might be improved, we, too, would extend the functions 
of the state. 

But it seems to us the vice of socialism in all its 
degrees is its want of radicalism, of going to the root. 
It takes its theories from those who have sought to jus- 
tify the impoverishment of the masses, and its advocates 
generally teach the preposterous and degrading doctrine 
that slavery was the first condition of labor. It assumes 
that the tendency of wages to a minimum is the natural 
law, and seeks to abolish wages; it assumes that the 
natural result of competition is to grind down workers, 
and seeks to aboHsh competition by restrictions, prohibi- 
tions and extensions of governing power. Thus mistak- 
ing effects for causes, and childishly blaming the stone 
for hitting it, it wastes strength in striving for remedies 
that when not worse are futile. Associated though it is 
in many places with democratic aspiration, yet its essence 
is the same delusion to which the children of Israel 
yielded when against the protest of their prophet they 
insisted on a king; the delusion that has everywhere 
corrupted democracies and enthroned tyrants — that 
power over the people can be used for the benefit of the 
people ; that there may be devised machinery that through 
human agencies will secure for the management of indi- 
vidual affairs more wisdom and more virtue than the 
people themselves possess. 

This superficiality and this tendency may be seen in all 
the phases of socialism. 

Take, for instance, protectionism. What support it 
has, beyond the mere selfish desire of sellers to compel 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 59 

buyers to pay them more than their goods are worth, 
springs from such superficial ideas as that production, 
not consumption, is the end of effort; that money is 
more valuable than money's-worth, and to sell more prof- 
itable than to buy ; and above all from a desire to limit 
competition, springing from an unanalyzing recognition 
of the phenomena that necessarily follow when men who 
have the need to labor are deprived by monopoly of 
access to the natural and indispensable element of all 
labor. Its methods involve the idea that governments 
can more wisely direct the expenditure of labor and the 
investment of capital than can laborers and capitalists, 
and that the men who control governments will use this 
power for the general good and not in their own inter- 
ests. They tend to multiply officials, restrict liberty, 
invent crimes. They promote perjury, fraud and corrup- 
tion. And they would, were the theory carried to its 
logical conclusion, destroy civilization and reduce man- 
kind to savagery. 

Take trades-unionism. "While within narrow lines 
trades-unionism promotes the idea of the mutuality of 
interests, and often helps to raise courage and further 
political education, and while it has enabled limited 
bodies of, working-men to improve somewhat their con- 
dition, and gain, as it were, breathing-space, yet it takes 
no note of the general causes that determine the condi- 
tions of labor, and strives for the elevation of only a 
small part of the great body by means that cannot help 
the rest. Aiming at the restriction of competition — the 
limitation of the right to labor, its methods are like those 
of an army, which even in a righteous cause are subver- 
sive of liberty and liable to abuse, while its weapon, the 
strike, is destructive in its nature, both to combatants 
and non-combatants, being a form of passive war. To 
apply the principle of trades-unions to all industry, as 



60 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 

some dream of doing, would be to enthrall men in a caste 
system. 

Or take even sncli moderate measures as tlie limitation 
of working-hours and of the labor of women and chil- 
dren. They are superficial in looking no further than to 
the eagerness of men and women and little children to 
work unduly, and in proposing forcibly to restrain over- 
work while utterly ignoring its cause— the sting of 
poverty that forces human beings to it. And the 
methods by which these restraints must be enforced, 
multiply officials, interfere with personal liberty, tend to 
corruption, and are liable to abuse. 

As for thoroughgoing socialism, which is the more to 
be honored as having the courage of its convictions, it 
would carry these vices to full expression. Jumping to 
conclusions without effort to discover causes, it fails to 
see that oppression does not come from the nature of 
capital, but from the wrong that robs labor of capital by 
divorcing it from land, and that creates a fictitious capi- 
tal that is really capitalized monopoly. It fails to see 
that it would be impossible for capital to oppress labor 
were labor free to the natural material of production j 
that the wage system in itself springs from mutual con- 
venience, being a form of cooperation in which one of 
the parties prefers a certain to a contingent result; and 
that what it calls the "iron law of wages" is not the 
natural law of wages, but only the law of wages in that 
unnatural condition in which men are made helpless by 
being deprived of the materials for life and work. It 
falls to see that what it mistakes for the evils of competi- 
tion are really the evils of restricted competition— are 
due to a one-sided competition to which men are forced 
when deprived of land. While its methods, the organiza- 
tion of men into industrial armies, the direction and 
control of all production and exchange by governmental 



OPEN LETTEE TO POPE LEO XIH. 61 

or semi-governmental bureaus, would, if carried to full 
expression, mean Egyptian despotism. 

We differ from the socialists in our diagnosis of the 
evil and we differ from them as to remedies. We have 
no fear of capital, regarding it as the natural handmaiden 
of labor J we look on interest in itself as natural and 
just ; we would set no hmit to accumulation, nor impose 
on the rich any burden that is not equally placed on the 
poor 5 we see no evil in competition, but deem unre- 
stricted competition to be as necessary to the health of 
the industrial and social organism as the free circulation 
of the blood is to the health of the bodily organism— to 
be the agency whereby the fullest cooperation is to be 
secured. We would simply take for the community what 
belongs to the community, the value that attaches to 
land by the growth of the community ; leave sacredly to 
the individual all that belongs to the individual; and, 
treating necessary monopolies as functions of the state, 
abolish all restrictions and prohibitions save those re- 
quired for public health, safety, morals and convenience. 

But the fundamental difference— the difference I ask 
your Holiness specially to note, is in this : socialism in 
all its phases looks on the evils of our civilization as 
springing from the inadequacy or inharmony of natural 
relations, which must be artificially organized or 
improved. In its idea there devolves on the state the 
necessity of intelligently organizing the industrial rela- 
tions of men ; the construction, as it were, of a great 
machine whose complicated parts shall properly work 
together under the direction of human intelligence. This 
is the reason why socialism tends toward atheism. 
Failing to see the order and symmetry of natural law, 
it fails to recognize God. 

On the other hand, we who caU ourselves single-tax 
men (a name which expresses merely our practical prop- 



62 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

ositions) see in tlie social and industrial relations of 
men not a machine which requires construction, but an 
organism which needs only to be suffered to grow. We 
see in the natural social and industrial laws such har- 
mony as we see in the adjustments of the human body, 
and that as far transcends the power of man's intelli- 
gence to order and direct as it is beyond man's intelli- 
gence to order and direct the vital movements of his 
frame. We see in these social and industrial laws so 
close a relation to the moral law as must spring from the 
same Authorship, and that proves the moral law to be 
the sure guide of man where his intelligence would 
wander and go astray. Thus, to us, all that is needed to 
remedy the evils of our time is to do justice and give 
freedom. This is the reason why our beliefs tend 
toward, nay are indeed the only beliefs consistent with 
a firm and reverent faith in God, and with the recogni- 
tion of his law as the supreme law which men must 
follow if they would secure prosperity and avoid destruc- 
tion. This is the reason why to us political economy 
only serves to show the depth of wisdom in the simple 
truths which common people heard gladly from the lips 
of Him of whom it was said with wonder, '^Is not this 
the Carpenter of Nazareth ? " 

And it is because that in what we propose— the secur- 
ing to all men of equal natural opportunities for the 
exercise of their powers and the removal of all legal 
restriction on the legitimate exercise of those powers— 
we see the conformation of human law to the moral law, 
that we hold with confidence that this is not merely the 
sufficient remedy for all the evils you so strikingly 
portray, but that it is the only possible remedy. 

Nor is there any other. The organization of man is 
such, his relations to the world in which he is placed are 
such— that is to say, the immutable laws of God are such, 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xm. 63, 

that it is beyond tlie power of human ingenuity to devise 
any way by which the evils born of the injustice that robs 
men of their birthright can be removed otherwise than 
by doing justice, by opening to all the bounty that God 
has provided for all. 

Since man can live only on land and from land, since 
land is the reservoir of matter and force from which 
man's body itself is taken, and on which he must draw 
for all that he can produce, does it not irresistibly follow 
that to give the land in ownership to some men and to 
deny to others all right to it is to divide mankind into 
the rich and the poor, the privileged and the helpless? 
Does it not follow that those who have no rights to the 
use of land can live only by selling their power to labor 
to those who own the land? Does it not follow that 
what the socialists call " the iron law of wages,'' what the 
political economists term "the tendency of wages to a 
minimum," must take from the landless masses— the 
mere laborers, who of themselves have no power to use 
their labor— all the benefits of any possible advance or 
improvement that does not alter this unjust division of 
land ? For having no power to employ themselves, they 
must, either as labor-sellers or as land-renters, compete 
with one another for permission to labor. This competi- 
tion with one another of men shut out from God's inex- 
haustible storehouse has no limit but starvation, and 
must ultimately force wages to their lowest point, the 
point at which life can just be maintained and reproduc- 
tion carried on. 

This is not to say that all wages must fall to this point, 
but that the wages of that necessarily largest stratum of 
laborers who have only ordinary knowledge, skill and 
aptitude must so fall. The wages of special classes, who 
are fenced off from the pressure of competition by pecu- 
liar knowledge, skill or other causes, may remain above 



64 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

that ordinary level. Thus, where the ability to read and 
write is rare its possession enables a man to obtain 
higher wages than the ordinary laborer. But as the 
diffusion of education makes the ability to read and 
write general this advantage is lost. So when a vocation 
requires special training or skill, or is made difficult of 
access by artificial restrictions, the checking of competi- 
tion tends to keep wages in it at a higher level. But as 
the progress of invention dispenses with peculiar skill, 
or artificial restrictions are broken down, these higher 
wages sink to the ordinary level. And so, it is only so 
long as they are special that such qualities as industry, 
prudence and thrift can enable the ordinary laborer to 
maintain a condition above that which gives a mere liv- 
ing. Where they become general, the law of competition 
must reduce the earnings or savings of such qualities to 
the general level — which, land being monopolized and 
labor helpless, can be only that at which the next lowest 
point is the cessation of life. 

Or, to state the same thing in another way: Land 
being necessary to life and labor, its owners will be able, 
in return for permission to use it, to obtain from mere 
laborers all that labor can produce, save enough to enable 
such of them to maintain life as are wanted by the land- 
owners and their dependents. 

Thus, where private property in land has divided 
society into a landowning class and a landless class, 
there is no possible invention or improvement, whether 
it be industrial, social or moral, which, so long as it does 
not affect the ownership of land, can prevent poverty or 
relieve the general conditions of mere laborers. For 
whether the effect of any invention or improvement be 
to increase what labor can produce or to decrease what 
is required to support the laborer, it can, so soon as it 
becomes general, result only in increasing the income of 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 65 

the owners of land, without at all benefiting the mere 
laborers. In no event can those possessed of the mere 
ordinary power to labor, a power utterly useless without 
the means necessary to labor, keep more of their earnings 
than enough to enable them to live. 

How true this is we may see in the facts of to-day. In 
our own time invention and discovery have enormously 
increased the productive power of labor, and at the same 
time greatly reduced the cost of many things necessary 
to the support of the laborer. Have these improvements 
anywhere raised the earnings of the mere laborer? 
Have not their benefits mainly gone to the owners of 
land— enormously increased land values? 

I say mainly, for some part of the benefit has gone to 
the cost of monstrous standing armies and warlike prep- 
arations; to the payment of interest on great public 
debts; and, largely disguised as interest on fictitious 
capital, to the owners of monopolies other than that of 
land. But improvements that would do away with these 
wastes would not benefit labor; they would simply 
increase the profits of landowners. Were standing 
armies and aU their incidents abolished, were aU monop- 
olies other than that of land done away with, were 
governments to become models of economy, were the 
profits of speculators, of middlemen, of aU sorts of 
exchangers saved, were every one to become so strictly 
honest that no policemen, no courts, no prisons, no pre- 
cautions against dishonesty would be needed— the result 
would not differ from that which has followed the 
increase of productive power. 

Nay, would not these very blessings bring starvation 
to many of those who now manage to live? Is it not 
true that if there were proposed to-day, what aU Chris- 
tian men ought to pray for, the complete disbandment of 
all the armies of Europe, the greatest fears would be 



66 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 

aroused for tlie consequences of throwing on the labor- 
market so many unemployed laborers ? 

The explanation of this and of similar paradoxes that 
in our time perplex on every side may be easily seen. 
The effect of all inventions and improvements that 
increase productive power, that save waste and econo- 
mize effort, is to lessen the labor required for a given 
result, and thus to save labor, so that we speak of them 
as labor-saving inventions or improvements. Now, in a 
natural state of society where the rights of all to the use 
of the earth are acknowledged, labor-saving improve- 
ments might go to the very utmost that can be imagined 
without lessening the demand for men, since in such 
natural conditions the demand for men lies in their own 
enjoyment of life and the strong instincts that the 
Creator has implanted in the human breast. But in 
that unnatural state of society where the masses of men 
are disinherited of aU but the power to labor when 
opportunity to labor is given them by others, there the 
demand for them becomes simply the demand for their 
services by those who hold this opportunity, and man 
himself becomes a commodity. Hence, although the 
natural effect of labor-saving improvement is to increase 
wages, yet in the unnatural condition which private 
ownership of the land begets, the effect, even of such 
moral improvements as the disbandment of armies and 
the saving of the labor that vice entails, is, by lessening 
the commercial demand, to lower wages and reduce mere 
laborers to starvation or pauperism. If labor-saving 
inventions and improvements could be carried to the 
very abolition of the necessity for labor, what would be 
the result ? Would it not be that landowners could then 
get all the wealth that the land was capable of produc- 
ing, and would have no need at all for laborers, who 
must then either starve or live as pensioners on the 
bounty of the landowners? 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 67 

Thus, SO long as private property in land continues— 
so long as some men are treated as owners of the earth 
and other men can live on it only by their sufferance — 
human wisdom can devise no means by which the evils 
of our present condition may be avoided. 

Nor yet could the wisdom of God. 

By the light of that right reason of which St. Thomas 
speaks we may see that even he, the Almighty, so long as his 
laws remain what they are, could do nothing to prevent 
poverty and starvation while property in land continues. 

How could he ? Should he infuse new vigor into the 
sunlight, new virtue into the air, new fertility into the 
soil, would not aU this new bounty go to the owners of 
the land, and work not benefit, but rather injury, to 
mere laborers ? Should he open the minds of men to the 
possibilities of new substances, new adjustments, new 
powers, could this do any more to relieve poverty than 
steam, electricity and all the numberless discoveries and 
inventions of our time have done? Or, if he were to 
send down from the heavens above or cause to gush up 
from the subterranean depths, food, clothing, all the 
things that satisfy man's material desires, to whom under 
our laws would all these belong ? So far from benefiting 
man, would not this increase and extension of his bounty 
prove but a curse, enabling the privileged class more 
riotously to roll in wealth, and bringing the disinherited 
class to more wide-spread starvation or pauperism ? 



Believing that the social question is at bottom a reli- 
gious question, we deem it of happy augury to the world 
that in your Encyclical the most influential of all reli- 
gious teachers has directed attention to the condition of 
labor. 



68 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

But while we appreciate the many wholesome truths 
you utter, while we feel, as all must feel, that you are 
animated by a desire to help the suffering and oppressed, 
and to put an end to any idea that the church is divorced 
from the aspiration for liberty and progress, yet it is 
painfully obvious to us that one fatal assumption hides 
from you the cause of the evils you see, and makes it 
impossible for you to propose any adequate remedy. 
This assumption is, that private property in land is of 
the same nature and has the same sanctions as private 
property in things produced by labor. In spite of its 
undeniable truths and its benevolent spirit, your Encyc- 
lical shows you to be involved in such difficulties as a 
physician called to examine one suffering from disease of 
the stomach would meet should he begin with a refusal 
to consider the stomach. 

Prevented by this assumption from seeing the true 
cause, the only causes you find it possible to assign for 
the growth of misery and wretchedness are the destruc- 
tion of working-men's guilds in the last century, the 
repudiation in public institutions and laws of the ancient 
religion, rapacious usury, the custom of working by 
contract, and the concentration of trade. 

Such diagnosis is manifestly inadequate to account for 
evils that are alike felt in Catholic countries, in Protestant 
countries, in countries that adhere to the Grreek com- 
munion and in countries where no religion is professed 
by the state ; that are alike felt in old countries and in 
new countries ; where industry is simple and where it is 
most elaborate ; and amid all varieties of industrial cus- 
toms and relations. 

But the real cause will be clear if you will consider 
that since labor must find its workshop and reservoir in 
land, the labor question is but another name for the land 
question, and will reexamine your assumption that pri- 
vate property in land is necessary and right. 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 69 

See liow fully adequate is tlie cause I liave pointed out. 
The most important of all the material relations of man 
is his relation to the planet he inhabits, and hence, the 
"impious resistance to the benevolent intentions of his 
Creator," which, as Bishop Nulty says, is involved in 
private property in land, must produce evils wherever it 
exists. But by virtue of the law, " unto whom much is 
given, from him much is required," the very progress of 
civilization makes the evils produced by private property 
in land more wide-spread and intense. 

What is producing throughout the civilized world that 
condition of things you rightly describe as intolerable is 
not this and that local error or minor mistake. It is 
nothing less than the progress of civilization itself j 
nothing less than the intellectual advance and the mate- 
rial growth in which our century has been so preeminent, 
acting in a state of society based on private property in 
land 5 nothing less than the new gifts that in our time 
God has been showering on man, but which are being 
turned into scourges by man's "impious resistance to the 
benevolent intentions of his Creator." 

The discoveries of science, the gains of invention, have 
given to us in this wonderful century more than has been 
given to men in any time before ; and, in a degree so 
rapidly accelerating as to suggest geometrical progres- 
sion, are placing in our hands new material powers. But 
with the benefit comes the obligation. In a civilization 
beginning to pulse with steam and electricity, where the 
sun paints pictures and the phonograph stores speech, it 
will not do to be merely as just as were our fathers. 
Intellectual advance and material advance require corre- 
sponding moral advance. Knowledge and power are 
neither good nor evil. They are not ends but means— 
evolving forces that if not controlled in orderly relations 
must take disorderly and destructive forms. The deep- 
ening pain, the increasing perplexity, the growing dis- 



70 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

content for wMcli, as you truly say, some remedy must he 
found and quickly found, mean nothing less than that 
forces of destruction swifter and more terrible than 
those that have shattered every preceding civilization are 
already menacing ours — that if it does not quickly rise 
to a higher moral level ; if it does not become in deed as 
in word a Christian civilization, on the wall of its 
splendor must flame the doom of Babylon: ''Thou art 
weighed in the balance and found wanting ! '^ 

One false assumption prevents you from seeing the 
real cause and true significance of the facts that have 
prompted your Encyclical. And it fatally fetters you 
when you seek a remedy. 

You state that you approach the subject with confi- 
dence, yet in all that greater part of the Encyclical 
(19-67) devoted to the remedy, while there is an abun- 
dance of moral reflections and injunctions, excellent in 
themselves but dead and meaningless as you apply them, 
the only definite practical proposals for the improvement 
of the condition of labor are : 

1. That the state should step in to prevent overwork, 
to restrict the employment of women and children, to 
secure in workshops conditions not unfavorable to health 
and morals, and, at least where there is danger of in- 
sufficient wages provoking strikes, to regulate wages 
(39-40). 

2. That it should encourage the acquisition of property 
(in land) by working-men (50-51). 

3. That working-men's associations should be formed 
(52-67). 

These remedies so far as they go are socialistic, and 
though the Encyclical is not without recognition of the 
individual character of man and of the priority of the 
individual and the family to the state, yet the whole 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xni. 71 

tendency and spirit of its remedial suggestions lean 
unmistakably to socialism — extremely moderate socialism 
it is true; socialism hampered and emasculated by a 
supreme respect for private possessions; yet socialism 
still. But, although, you frequently use the ambiguous 
term '^ private property " when the context shows that you 
have in mind private property in land, the one thing clear 
on the surface and becoming clearer still with examina- 
tion is that you insist that whatever else may be done, the 
private ownership of land shall be left untouched. 

I have already referred generally to the defects that 
attach to all socialistic remedies for the evil condition of 
labor, but respect for your Holiness dictates that I 
should speak specifically, even though briefly, of the 
remedies proposed or suggested by you. 

Of these, the widest and strongest are that the state 
should restrict the hours of labor, the employment of 
women and children, the unsanitary conditions of work- 
shops, etc. Yet how little may in this way be accomplished. 

A strong, absolute ruler might hope by such regula- 
tions to alleviate the conditions of chattel slaves. But 
the tendency of our times is toward democracy, and 
democra uio states are necessarily weaker in paternalism, 
while in the industrial slavery, growing out of private 
ownership of land, that prevails in Christendom to-day, 
it is not the master who forces the slave to labor, but the 
slave who urges the master to let him labor. Thus the 
greatest difficulty in enforcing such regulations comes 
from those whom they are intended to benefit. It is not, 
for instance, the masters who make it difficult to enforce 
restrictions on child labor in factories, but the mothers, 
who, prompted by poverty, misrepresent the ages of 
their children even to the masters, and teach the children 
to misrepresent. 



72 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

But while in large factories and mines regulations as 
to hours, ages, etc., though subject to evasion and offer- 
ing opportunities for extortion and corruption, may be to 
some extent enforced, how can they have any effect in 
those far wider branches of industry where the laborer 
works for himself or for small employers? 
■ All such remedies are of the nature of the remedy for 
overcrowding that is generally prescribed with them — 
the restriction under penalty of the number who may 
occupy a room and the demolition of unsanitary build- 
ings. Since these measures have no tendency to increase 
house accommodation or to augment ability to pay for 
it, the overcrowding that is forced back in some places 
goes on in other places and to a worse degree. All such 
remedies begin at the wrong end. They are like putting 
on brake and bit to hold in quietness horses that are 
being lashed into frenzy; they are like trying to stop a 
locomotive by holding its wheels instead of shutting off 
steam ; like attempting to cure smallpox by driving back 
its pustules. Men do not overwork themselves because 
they like it ; it is not in the nature of the mother's heart 
to send children to work when they ought to be at play ; 
it is not of choice that laborers will work under danger- 
ous and unsanitary conditions. These things, like over- 
crowding, come from the sting of poverty. And so long 
as the poverty of which they are the expression is left 
untouched, restrictions such as you indorse can have 
only partial and evanescent results. The cause remain- 
ing, repression in one place can only bring out its effects 
in other places, and the task you assign to the state is 
as hopeless as to ask it to lower the level of the ocean by 
bailing out the sea. 

Nor can the state cure poverty by regulating wages. 
It is as much beyond the power of the state to regulate 
wages as it is to regulate the rates of interest. Usury 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xin. 73 

laws have been tried again and again, but the only effect 
they have ever had has been to increase what the poorer 
borrowers must pay, and for the same reasons that all 
attempts to lower by regulation the price of goods have 
always resulted merely in increasing them. The general 
rate of wages is fixed by the ease or difficulty with which 
labor can obtain access to land, ranging from the full 
earnings of labor, where land is free, to the least on 
which laborers can live and reproduce, where land is 
fully monopolized. Thus, where it has been compara- 
tively easy for laborers to get land, as in the United 
States and in Australasia, wages have been higher than 
in Europe and it has been impossible to get European 
laborers to work there for wages that they would gladly 
accept at home ; while as monopolization goes on under 
the influence of private property in land, wages tend to 
faU, and the social conditions of Europe to appear. 
Thus, under the partial yet substantial recognition of 
common rights to land, of which I have spoken, the 
many attempts of the British Parliament to reduce wages 
by regulation failed utterly. And so, when the institu- 
tion of private property in land had done its work in 
England, all attempts of Parliament to raise wages 
proved unavailing. In the beginning of this century it 
was even attempted to increase the earnings of labor- 
ers by grants in aid of wages. But the only result 
was to lower commensurately what wages employers 
paid. 

The state could maintain wages above the tendency 
of the market (for as I have shown labor deprived of 
land becomes a commodity), only by offering employment 
to all who wish it 5 or by lending its sanction to strikes 
and supporting them with its funds. Thus it is, that the 
thoroughgoing socialists who want the state to take all 
industry into its hands are much more logical than those 



74 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 

timid socialists who propose that the state should regulate 
private industry— but only a little. 

The same hopelessness attends your suggestion that 
working-people should be encouraged by the state in 
obtaining a share of the land. It is evident that by this 
you mean that, as is now being attempted in Ireland, the 
state shall buy out large landowners in favor of small 
ones, establishing what are known as peasant proprietors. 
Supposing that this can be done even to a considerable 
extent, what will be accomplished save to substitute a 
larger privileged class for a smaller privileged class? 
What will be done for the still larger class that must 
remain, the laborers of the agricultural districts, the 
workmen of the towns, the proletarians of the cities ? Is 
it not true, as Professor De Laveleye says, that in such 
countries as Belgium, where peasant proprietary exists, 
the tenants, for there still exist tenants, are rack-rented 
with a mercilessness unknown in Ireland ? Is it not true 
that in such countries as Belgium the condition of the 
mere laborer is even worse than it is in Great Britain, 
where large ownerships obtain? And if the state 
attempts to buy up land for peasant proprietors will not 
the effect be, what is seen to-day in Ireland, to increase 
the market value of land and thus make it more difficult 
for those not so favored, and for those who will come 
after, to get land? How, moreover, on the principle 
which you declare (36), that "to the state the interests 
of all are equal, whether high or low," will you justify 
state aid to one man to buy a bit of land without also 
insisting on state aid to another man to buy a donkey, to 
another to buy a shop, to another to buy the tools and 
materials of a trade— state aid in short to everybody who 
may be able to make good use of it or thinks that he 
could? And are you not thus landed in communism— 
not the communism of the early Christians and of the 



OPEN LETTEE TO POPE LEO XIII. 75 

religious orders, but communism tliat uses tlie coercive 
power of the state to take rightful property by force from 
those who have, to give to those who have not ? For the 
state has no purse of Fortunatus ; the state cannot repeat 
the miracle of the loaves and fishes; all that the state 
can give, it must get by some form or other of the taxing 
power. And whether it gives or lends money, or gives 
or lends credit, it cannot give to those who have not, 
without taking from those who have. 

But aside from all this, any scheme of dividing up 
land while maintaining private property in land is futile. 
Small holdings cannot coexist with the treatment of 
land as private property where civilization is materially 
advancing and wealth augments. We may see this in 
the economic tendencies that in ancient times were the 
main cause that transformed world-conquering Italy 
from a land of small farms to a land of great estates. 
We may see it in the fact that while two centuries ago 
the majority of English farmers were owners of the land 
they tilled, tenancy has been for a long time the all but 
universal condition of the English farmer. And now the 
mighty forces of steam and electricity have come to urge 
concentration. It is in the United States that we may 
see on the largest scale how their power is operating to 
turn a nation of landowners into a nation of tenants. 
The principle is clear and irresistible. Material progress 
makes land more valuable, and when this increasing 
value is left to private owners land must pass from the 
ownership of the poor into the ownership of the rich, 
just as diamonds so pass when poor men find them. 
What the British government is attempting in Ireland is 
to build snow-houses in the Arabian desert! to plant 
bananas in Labrador ! 

There is one way, and only one way, in which working- 
people in our civilization may be secured a share in the 
land of their country, and that is the way that we pro- 



76 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

pose— the taking of tlie profits of landownership for the 
community. 

As to working-men's associations, what yonr Holiness 
seems to contemplate is the formation and encourage- 
ment of societies akin to the Catholic sodalities, and to 
the friendly and beneficial societies, like the Odd Fellows, 
which have had a large extension in English-speaking 
countries. Such associations may promote fraternity, 
extend social intercourse and provide assurance in case 
of sickness or death, but if they go no further they are 
powerless to affect wages even among their members. 
As to trades-unions proper, it is hard to define your posi- 
tion, which is, perhaps, best stated as one of warm appro- 
bation provided that they do not go too far. For while 
you object to strikes ; while you reprehend societies that 
" do their best to get into their hands the whole field of 
labor and to force working-men either to join them or 
to starve ; " while you discountenance the coercing of 
employers and seem to think that arbitration might take 
the place of strikes ; yet you use expressions and assert 
principles that are all that the trades-unionist would ask, 
not merely to justify the strike and the boycott, but even 
the use of violence where only violence would suffi.ce. 
For you speak of the insufficient wages of workmen as 
due to the greed of rich employers ; you assume the moral 
right of the workman to obtain employment from others 
at wages greater than those others are willing freely to give ; 
and you deny the right of any one to work for such wages 
as he pleases, in such a way as to lead Mr. Stead, in so 
widely read a journal as the Review of Reviews, approvingly 
to declare that you regard " blacklegging," i.e., the work- 
ing for less than union wages, as a crime. 

To men conscious of bitter injustice, to men steeped in 
poverty yet mocked by flaunting wealth, such words 
mean more than I can think you realize. 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xm. 77 

When fire shall be cool and ice be warm, when armies 
shall throw away lead and iron, to try conclusions by the 
pelting of rose-leaves, such labor associations as you are 
thinking of may be possible. But not till then. For 
labor associations can do nothing to raise wages but by 
force. It may be force applied passively, or force applied 
actively, or force held in reserve, but it must be force. 
They must coerce or hold the power to coerce employers j 
they must coerce those among their own members dis- 
posed to straggle 5 they must do their best to get into 
their hands the whole field of labor they seek to occupy 
and to force other working-men either to join them or 
to starve. Those who tell you of trades-unions bent on 
raising wages by moral suasion alone are like those who 
would tell you of tigers that live on oranges. 

The condition of the masses to-day is that of men 
pressed together in a hall where ingress is open and more 
are constantly coming, but where the doors for egress 
are closed. If forbidden to relieve the general pressure 
by throwing open those doors, whose bars and bolts are 
private property in land, they can only mitigate the pres- 
sure on themselves by forcing back others, and the 
weakest must be driven to the waU. This is the way of 
labor-unions and trade-guilds. Even those amiable 
societies that you recommend would in their efforts to 
find employment for their own members necessarily 
displace others. 

For even the philanthropy which, recognizing the evil 
of trying to help labor by alms, seeks to help men to 
help themselves by finding them work, becomes aggressive 
in the blind and bitter struggle that private property in 
land entails, and in helping one set of men injures others. 
Thus, to minimize the bitter complaints of taking work 
from others and lessening the wages of others in provid- 
ing their own beneficiaries with work and wages, benevo- 
lent societies are forced to devices akin to the digging of 



73 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

holes and filling them up again. Our American societies 
feel this difficulty, General Booth encounters it in Eng- 
land, and the Catholic societies which your Holiness 
recommends must find it, when they are formed. 

Your Holiness knows of, and I am sure honors, the 
princely generosity of Baron Hirsch toward his suffering 
coreligionists. But, as I write, the New York news- 
papers contain accounts of an immense meeting held in 
Cooper Union, in this city, on the evening of Friday, 
September 4, in which a number of Hebrew trades-unions 
protested in the strongest manner against the loss of 
work and reduction of wages that are being effected by 
Baron Hirsch's generosity in bringing their own coun- 
trymen here and teaching them to work. The resolution 
unanimously adopted at this great meeting thus con- 
cludes : 

We now demand of Baron Hirsch Mmself that he release us from 
his " charity " and take back the millions, which, instead of a bless- 
ing, have proved a curse and a source of misery. 

Nor does this show that the members of these Hebrew 
labor-unions — who are themselves immigrants of the 
same class as those Baron Hirsch is striving to help, for 
in the next generation they lose with us their distinctive- 
ness— are a whit less generous than other men. 

Labor associations of the nature of trade-guilds or 
unions are necessarily selfish ; by the law of their being 
they must fight for their own hand, regardless of who is 
hurt ; they ignore and must ignore the teaching of Christ 
that we should do to others as we would have them do to 
us, which a true political economy shows is the only way 
to the full emancipation of the masses. They must do 
their best to starve workmen who do not join them, they 
must by all means in their power force back the " black- 
leg"— as the soldier in battle must shoot down his 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 79 

mother^s son if in tlie opposing ranks. And who is the 
blackleg? A fellow-creature seeking work — a fellow- 
creature in all probability more pressed and starved than 
those who so bitterly denounce him, and often with the 
hungry pleading faces of wife and child behind him. 

And, in so far as they succeed, what is it that trade- 
guilds and unions do but to impose more restrictions on 
natural rights; to create ^^ trusts" in labor; to add to 
privileged classes other somewhat privileged classes ; and 
to press the weaker closer to the wall ? 

I speak without prejudice against trades-unions, of 
which for years I was an active member. And in point- 
ing out to your Holiness that their principle is selfish and 
incapable of large and permanent benefits, and that their 
methods violate natural rights and work hardship and 
injustice, I am only saying to you what, both in my 
books and by word of mouth, I have said over and over 
again to them. Nor is what I say capable of dispute. 
Intelligent trades-unionists know it, and the less intelli- 
gent vaguely feel it. And even those of the classes of 
wealth and leisure who, as if to head off the demand for 
natural rights, are preaching trades-unionism to working- 
men, must needs admit it. 

Your Holiness will remember the great London dock 
strike of two years ago, which, with that of other influ- 
ential men, received the moral support of that Prince of 
the Church whom we of the English speech hold higher 
and dearer than any prelate has been held by us since 
the blood of .Thomas a Becket stained the Canterbury 
altar. 

In a volume called " The Story of the Dockers' Strike," 
written by Messrs. H. Llewellyn Smith and Vaughan 
Nash, with an introduction by Sydney Buxton, M.P., 
which advocates trades -unionism as the solution of the 
labor question, and of which a large number were sent 



80 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

to Australia as a sort of official recognition of the gener- 
ous aid received from there by the strikers, I find in the 
summing up, on pages 164-165, the following : 

If the settlement lasts, work at the docks will be more regular, 
better paid, and carried on under better conditions than ever before. 
All this will be an unqualified gain to those who get the benefit from 
it. But another result will undoubtedly be to contract the field of 
employment and lessen the number of those for whom work can te found. 
The lower-class casual will, in the end, find his position more pre- 
carious than ever before, in proportion to the increased regularity 
of work which the "fitter" of the laborers will secure. The effect 
of the organization of dock labor, as of all classes of labor, will be 
to squeeze out the residuum. The loafer, the cadger, the failure in 
the industrial race— the members of "Class B" of Mr. Charles 
Booth's hierarchy of social classes— will be no gainers by the change, 
but will rather find another door closed against them, and this in many 
eases the last door to employment. 

I am far from wishing that your Holiness should join 
in that pharisaical denunciation of trades-unions common 
among those who, while quick to point out the injustice 
of trades-unions in denying to others the equal right to 
work, are themselves supporters of that more primary 
injustice that denies the equal right to the standing-place 
and natural material necessary to work. What I wish 
to point out is that trades-unionism, while it may be a 
partial palliative, is not a remedy; that it has not that 
moral character which could alone justify one in the 
position of your Holiness in urging it as good in itself. 
Yet, so long as you insist on private property in land 
what better can you do ? 

V. 

In the beginning of the Encyclical you declare that 
the responsibility of the apostolical office urges your 
Holiness to treat the question of the condition of labor 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 81 

"expressly and at length in order tliat there may be no 
mistake as to the principles which truth and justice dic- 
tate for its settlement." But, blinded by one false 
assumption, you do not see even fundamentals. 

You assume that the labor question is a question 
between wage- workers and their employers. But work- 
ing for wages is not the primary or exclusive occupation 
of labor. Primarily men work for themselves without 
the intervention of an employer. And the primary 
source of wages is in the earnings of labor, the man who 
works for himself and consumes his own products receiv- 
ing his wages in the fruits of his labor. Are not fisher- 
men, boatmen, cab-drivers, peddlers, working farmers- 
all, in short, of the many workers who get their wages 
directly by the sale of their services or products without 
the medium of an employer, as much laborers as those who 
work for the specific wages of an employer? In your 
consideration of remedies you do not seem even to have 
thought of them. Yet in reality the laborers who work 
for themselves are the first to be considered, since what 
men will be willing to accept from employers depends 
manifestly on what they can get by working for themselves. 

You assume that all employers are rich men, who 
might raise wages much higher were they not so grasp- 
ing. But is it not the fact that the great majority of 
employers are in reality as much pressed by competition 
as their workmen, many of them constantly on the verge 
of failure ? Such employers could not possibly raise the 
wages they pay, however they might wish to, unless all 
others were compelled to do so. 

You assume that there are in the natural order two 
classes, the rich and the poor, and that laborers naturally 
belong to the poor. 

It is true as you say that there are differences in capa- 
city, in diligence, in health and in strength, that may 



82 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

produce differences in fortune. These, however, are not 
the differences that divide men into rich and poor. The 
natural differences in powers and aptitudes are certainly 
not greater than are natural differences in stature. But 
while it is only by selecting giants and dwarfs that we 
can find men twice as tall as others, yet in the difference 
between rich and poor that exists to-day we find some 
men richer than other men by the thousandfold and the 
millionfold. 

Nowhere do these differences between wealth and 
poverty coincide with differences in individual powers 
and aptitudes. The real difference between rich and 
poor is the difference between those who hold the toll- 
gates and those who pay toll 5 between tribute-receivers 
and tribute-yielders. 

In what way does nature justify such a difference? 
In the numberless varieties of animated nature we find 
some species that are evidently intended to live on other 
species. But their relations are always marked by 
unmistakable differences in size, shape or organs. To 
man has been given dominion over all the other living 
things that tenant the earth. But is not this mastery 
indicated even in externals, so that no one can fail on 
sight to distinguish between a man and one of the 
inferior animals? Our American apologists for slavery 
used to contend that the black skin and woolly hair of 
the negro indicated the intent of nature that the black 
should serve the white ; but the difference that you 
assume to be natural is between men of the same race. 
What difference does nature show between such men as 
would indicate her intent that one should live idly yet be 
rich, and the other should work hard yet be poor? If I 
could bring you from the United States a man who has 
$200,000,000, and one who is glad to work for a few 
dollars a week, and place them side by side in your ante- 
chamber, would you be able to teU which was which, 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xm. 83 

even were you to call in the most skilled anatomist? 
Is it not clear that God in no way countenances or con- 
dones the division of rich and poor that exists to-day, or 
in any way permits it, except as having given them free 
will he permits men to choose either good or evil, and to 
avoid heaven if they prefer hell. For is it not clear that 
the division of men into the classes rich and poor has 
invariably its origin in force and fraud; invariably 
involves violation of the moral law; and is really a 
division into those who get the profits of robbery and 
those who are robbed ; those who hold in exclusive pos- 
session what Grod made for all, and those who are de- 
prived of his bounty ? Did not Christ in all his utterances 
and parables show that the gross difference between rich 
and poor is opposed to God's law ? Would he have con- 
demned the rich so strongly as he did, if the class dis- 
tinction between rich and poor did not involve injustice 
— was not opposed to God's intent ? 

It seems to us that your Holiness misses its real signif- 
icance in intimating that Christ, in becoming the son of 
a carpenter and himself working as a carpenter, showed 
merely that ''there is nothing to be ashamed of in seek- 
ing one's bread by labor." To say that is almost like 
saying that by not robbing people he showed that there 
is nothing to be ashamed of in honesty. If you will 
consider how true in any large view is the classification 
of all men into working-men, beggar-men and thieves, 
you will see that it was morally impossible that Christ 
during his stay on earth should have been anything else 
than a working-man, since he who came to fulfil the law 
must by deed as well as word obey God's law of labor. 

See how fully and how beautifully Christ's life on 
earth illustrated this law. Entering our earthly life in 
the weakness of infancy, as it is appointed that all should 
enter it, he lovingly took what in the natural order is 
lovingly rendered, the sustenance, secured by labor, that 



84 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 

one generation owes to its immediate successors. Arrived 
at maturity, lie earned his own subsistence by that com- 
mon labor in which the majority of men must and do 
earn it. Then passing to a higher— to the very highest 
—sphere of labor, he earned his subsistence by the teach- 
ing of moral and spiritual truths, receiving its material 
wages in the love-offerings of grateful hearers, and not 
refusiug the costly spikenard with which Mary anointed 
his feet. So, when he chose his disciples, he did not go 
to landowners or other monopolists who live on the labor 
of others, but to common laboring-men. And when he 
called them to a higher sphere of labor and sent them 
out to teach moral and spiritual truths, he told them to 
take, without condescension on the one hand or sense of 
degradation on the other, the loving return for such 
labor, saying to them that " the laborer is worthy of his 
hire," thus showing, what we hold, that all labor does not 
consist in what is called manual labor, but that whoever 
helps to add to the material, intellectual, moral or spirit- 
ual fullness of life is also a laborer.* 

* Nor should it be forgotten that the investigator, the philosopher, 
the teacher, the artist, the poet, the priest, though not engaged in 
the production of wealth, are not only engaged in the production of 
utilities and satisfactions to which the production of wealth is only 
a means, hut by acquiring and diffusing knowledge, stimulating 
mental powers and elevating the moral sense, may greatly increase 
the ability to produce wealth. For man does not live by bread 
alone. . . . He who by any exertion of mind or body adds to the 
aggregate of enjoyable wealth, increases the sum of human know- 
ledge, or gives to human life higher elevation or greater fullness — he 
is, in the large meaning of the words, a "producer," a "working- 
man," a "laborer," and is honestly earning honest wages. But he 
who without doing aught to make mankind richer, wiser, better, 
happier, lives on the toil of others— he, no matter by what name of 
honor he may be called, or how lustily the priests of Mammon may 
swing their censers before him, is in the last analysis but a beggar- 
man or a thiet.— Protection or Free Trade, pp. 74-75. 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 85 

In assuming that laborers, even ordinary manual 
laborers, are naturally poor, you ignore the fact that 
labor is the producer of wealth, and attribute to the 
natural law of the Creator an injustice that comes from 
man's impious violation of his benevolent intention. In 
the rudest stage of the arts it is possible, where justice 
prevails, for all well men to earn a living. With the 
labor-saving appliances of our time, it should be possible 
for all to earn much more. And so, in saying that 
poverty is no disgrace, you convey an unreasonable 
implication. For poverty ought to be a disgrace, since 
in a condition of social justice, it would, where unsought 
from religious motives or unimposed by unavoidable 
misfortune, imply recklessness or laziness. 

The sjonpathy of your Holiness seems exclusively 
directed to the poor, the workers. Ought this to be so ? 
Are not the rich, the idlers, to be pitied also ? By the 
word of the gospel it is the rich rather than the poor 
who caU for pity, for the presumption is that they will 
share the fate of Dives. And to any one who believes in 
a future life the condition of him who wakes to find his 
cherished millions left behind must seem pitiful. But 
even in this life, how really pitiable are the rich. The 
evil is not in wealth in itself — in its command over mate- 
rial things ; it is in the possession of wealth while others 
are steeped in poverty ; in being raised above touch with 
the life of humanity, from its work and its struggles, its 
hopes and its fears, and above all, from the love that 
sweetens life, and the kindly sympathies and generous 
acts that strengthen faith in man and trust in God. 
Consider how the rich see the meaner side of human 
nature; how they are surrounded by flatterers and 
sycophants; how they find ready instruments not only 
to gratify vicious impulses, but to prompt and stimulate 



86 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

them ; how they must constantly be on guard lest they 
be swindled; how often they must suspect an ulterior 
motive behind kindly deed or friendly word ; how if they 
try to be generous they are beset by shameless beggars 
and scheming impostors ; how often the family affections 
are chilled for them, and their deaths anticipated with 
the ill-concealed joy of expectant possession. The worst 
evil of poverty is not in the want of material things, but 
in the stunting and distortion of the higher qualities. 
So, though in another way, the possession of unearned 
wealth likewise stunts and distorts what is noblest in 
man. 

God's commands cannot be evaded with impunity. If 
it be God's command that men shall earn their bread by 
labor, the idle rich must suffer. And they do. See the 
utter vacancy of the lives of those who live for pleasure ; 
see the loathsome vices bred in a class who surrounded 
by poverty are sated with wealth. See that terrible 
punishment of ennui, of which the poor know so little 
that they cannot understand it; see the pessimism that 
grows among the wealthy classes — that shuts out God, 
that despises men, that deems existence in itself an evil, 
and fearing death yet longs for annihilation. 

When Christ told the rich young man who sought him 
to sell all he had and to give it to the poor, he was not 
thinking of the poor, but of the young man. And I 
doubt not that among the rich, and especially among the 
self-made rich, there are many who at times at least feel 
keenly the folly of their riches and fear for the dangers 
and temptations to which these expose their children. 
But the strength of long habit, the prompting of pride, 
the excitement of making and holding what have become 
for them the counters in a game of cards, the family 
expectations that have assumed the character of rights, 
and the real difficulty they find in making anj good use 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xm. 87 

of their wealtli, bind tliem to their burden, like a weary- 
donkey to bis pack, till tbey stumble on the precipice 
that bounds this life. 

Men who are sure of getting food when tbey shall need 
it eat only what appetite dictates. But with the sparse 
tribes who exist on the verge of the habitable globe life 
is either a famine or a feast. Enduring hunger for days, 
the fear of it prompts them to gorge Hke anacondas 
when successful in their quest of game. And so, what 
gives wealth its curse is what drives men to seek it, what 
makes it so envied and admired— the fear of want. As 
the unduly rich are the corollary of the unduly poor, so 
is the soul-destroying quality of riches but the reflex of 
the want that embrutes and degrades. The real evil lies 
in the injustice from which unnatural possession and 
unnatural deprivation both spring. 

But this injustice can hardly be charged on individuals 
or classes. The existence of private property in land is 
a great social wrong from which society at large suffers, 
and of which the very rich and the very poor are alike 
victims, though at the opposite extremes. Seeing this, it 
seems to us like a violation of Christian charity to speak 
of the rich as though they individually were responsible 
for the sufferings of the poor. Yet, while you do this, 
you insist that the cause of monstrous wealth and 
degrading poverty shall not be touched. Here is a man 
with a disfiguring and dangerous excrescence. One 
physician would kindly, gently, but firmly remove it. 
Another insists that it shall not be removed, but at the 
same time holds up the poor victim to hatred and ridi- 
cule. Which is right ? 

In seeking to restore all men to their equal and natural 
rights we do not seek the benefit of any class, but of all. 
For we both know by faith and see by fact that injustice 
can profit no one and that justice must benefit all. 



88 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 

Nor do we seek any "futile and ridiculous equality." 
We recognize, with you, that there must always be differ- 
ences and inequalities. In so far as these are in con- 
formity with the moral law, in so far as they do not 
violate the command, " Thou shalt not steal," we are con- 
tent. We do not seek to better Grod's work 5 we seek 
only to do his will. The equality we would bring about 
is not the equality of fortune, but the equality of natural 
opportunity 5 the equality that reason and religion alike 
proclaim— the equality in usufruct of all his children to 
the bounty of Our Father who art in Heaven. 

And in taking for the uses of society what we clearly 
see is the great fund intended for society in the divine 
order, we would not levy the slightest tax on the posses- 
sors of wealth, no matter how rich they might be. Not 
only do we deem such taxes a violation of the right of 
property, but we see that by virtue of beautiful adapta- 
tions in the economic laws of the Creator, it is impossible 
for any one honestly to acquire wealth, without at the 
same time adding to the wealth of the world. 

To persist in a wrong, to refuse to undo it, is always 
to become involved in other wrongs. Those who defend 
private property in land, and thereby deny the first and 
most important of all human rights, the equal right to 
the material substratum of life, are compelled to one of 
two courses. Either they must, as do those whose gospel 
is "Devil take the hindermost," deny the equal right to 
life, and by some theory like that to which the English 
clergyman Malthus has given his name, assert that 
nature (they do not venture to say God) brings into the 
world more men than there is provision for; or, they 
must, as do the socialists, assert as rights what in them- 
selves are wrongs. 

Your Holiness in the Encyclical gives an example of 
this. Denying the equality of right to the material basis 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIIL 89 

of life, and yet conscious that there is a right to live, you 
assert the right of laborers to employment and their 
right to receive from their employers a certain indefinite 
wage. No such rights exist. No one has a right to 
demand employment of another, or to demand higher 
wages than the other is willing to give, or in any way to 
put pressure on another to make him raise such wages 
against his will. There can be no better moral justifica- 
tion for such demands on employers by working-men 
than there would be for employers demanding that 
working-men shall be compelled to work for them when 
they do not want to and to accept wages lower than they 
are willing to take. Any seeming justification springs 
from a prior wrong, the denial to working-men of their 
natural rights, and can in the last analysis rest only on 
that supreme dictate of self-preservation that under 
extraordinary circumstances makes pardonable what in 
itself is theft, or sacrilege or even murder. 

A fugitive slave with the bloodhounds of his pursuers 
baying at his heels would in true Christian morals be 
held blameless if he seized the first horse he came across, 
even though to take it he had to knock down the rider. 
But this is not to justify horse-stealing as an ordinary 
means of traveling. 

When his disciples were hungry Christ permitted them 
to pluck corn on the Sabbath day. But he never denied 
the sanctity of the Sabbath by asserting that it was under 
ordinary circumstances a proper time to gather corn. 

He justified David, who when pressed by hunger com- 
mitted what ordinarily would be sacrilege, by taking 
from the temple the loaves of proposition. But in this 
he was far from saying that the robbing of temples was 
a proper way of getting a living. 

In the Encyclical however you commend the appli- 
cation to the ordinary relations of life, under normal 
conditions, of principles that in ethics are only to be 



90 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

tolerated under extraordinary conditions. You are driven 
to this assertion of false rights by your denial of true 
rights. The natural right which each man has is not 
that of demanding employment or wages from another 
man; but that of employing himself— that of applying 
by his own labor to the inexhaustible storehouse which 
the Creator has in the land provided for all men. Were 
that storehouse open, as by the single tax we would open 
it, the natural demand for labor would keep pace with 
the suppl}^, the man who sold labor and the man who 
bought it * would become free exchangers for mutual 
advantage, and all cause for dispute between workman 
and employer would be gone. For then, all being free to 
employ themselves, the mere opportunity to labor would 
cease to seem a boon ; and since no one would work for 
another for less, all things considered, than he could earn 
by working for himself, wages would necessarily rise to 
their full value, and the relations of workman and em- 
ployer be regulated by mutual interest and convenience. 

This is the only way in which they can be satisfactorily 
regulated. 

Your Holiness seems to assume that there is some just 
rate of wages that employers ought to be willing to pay 
and that laborers should be content to receive, and to 
imagine that if this were secured there would be an end 
of strife. This rate you evidently think of as that which 
will give working-men a frugal living, and perhaps 
enable them by hard work and strict economy to lay by 
a little something. 

But how can a just rate of wages be fixed without the 
"higgling of the market" any more than the just price 
of corn or pigs or ships or paintings can be so fixed? 
And would not arbitrary regulation in the one case as in 
the other check that interplay that most effectively pro- 
motes the economical adjustment of productive forces? 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 91 

Why should buyers of labor, any more than buyers of 
commodities, be called on to pay higher prices than in a 
free market they are compelled to pay ? Why should the 
sellers of labor be content with anything less than in a 
free market they can obtain ? Why should working-men 
be content with frugal fare when the world is so rich? 
Why should they be satisfied with a lifetime of toil and 
stinting, when the world is so beautiful? Why should 
not they also desire to gratify the higher instincts, the 
finer tastes? Why should they be forever content to 
travel in the steerage when others find the cabin more 
enjoyable? 

Nor will they. The ferment of our time does not arise 
merely from the fact that working-men find it harder to 
live on the same scale of comfort. It is also and perhaps 
still more largely due to the increase of their desires with 
an improved scale of comfort. This increase of desire 
must continue. For working-men are men. And man 
is the unsatisfied animal. 

He is not an ox, of whom it may be said, so much 
grass, so much grain, so much water, and a little salt, 
and he will be content. On the contrary, the more he 
gets the more he craves. When he has enough food 
then he wants better food. When he gets a shelter then 
he wants a more commodious and tasty one. When his 
animal needs are satisfied then mental and spiritual 
desires arise. 

This restless discontent is of the nature of man— of 
that nobler nature that raises him above the animals by 
so immeasurable a gulf, and shows him to be indeed 
created in the likeness of G-od. It is not to be quarreled 
with, for it is the motor of all progress. It is this that 
has raised St. Peter's dome and on duU, dead canvas 
made the angelic face of the Madonna to glow ; it is this 
that has weighed suns and analyzed stars, and opened 



92 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

page after page of the wonderful works of creative 
intelligence j it is this that has narrowed the Atlantic to 
an ocean ferry and trained the lightning to carry our 
messages to the remotest lands j it is this that is opening 
to us possibilities beside which all that our modern 
civilization has as yet accomplished seem small. Nor can 
it be repressed save by degrading and embruting menj 
by reducing Europe to Asia. 

Hence^ short of what wages may be earned when all 
restrictions on labor are removed and access to natural 
opportunities on equal terms secured to all, it is impos- 
sible to fix any rate of wages that will be deemed just, or 
any rate of wages that can prevent working-men striving 
to get more. So far from it making working-men more 
contented to improve their condition a little, it is certain 
to make them more discontented. 

Nor are you asking justice when you ask employers to 
pay their working-men more than they are compelled to 
pay— more than they could get others to do the work for. 
You are asking charity. For the surplus that the rich 
employer thus gives is not in reality wages, it is essen- 
tially alms. 

In speaking of the practical measures for the improve- 
ment of the condition of labor which your Holiness sug- 
gests, I have not mentioned what you place much stress 
upon— charity. But there is nothing practical in such 
recommendations as a cure for poverty, nor will any one so 
consider them. If it were possible for the giving of alms to 
abolish poverty there would be no poverty in Christendom. 

Charity is indeed a noble and beautiful virtue, grateful 
to man and approved by God. But charity must be built 
on justice. It cannot supersede justice. 

What is wrong with the condition of labor through 
the Christian world is that labor is robbed. And while 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xm. 93 

you justify tlie continuance of that robbery it is idle to 
urge charity. To do so — to commend charity as a sub- 
stitute for justice, is indeed something akin in essence to 
those heresies, condemned by your predecessors, that 
taught that the gospel had superseded the law, and that 
the love of Grod exempted men from moral obligations. 

All that charity can do where injustice exists is here 
and there to mollify somewhat the effects of injustice. 
It cannot cure them. Nor is even what little it can do to 
mollify the effects of injustice without evil. For what 
may be called the superimposed, and in this sense, sec- 
ondary virtues, work evil where the fundamental or 
primary virtues are absent. Thus sobriety is a virtue 
and diligence is a virtue. But a sober and diligent thief 
is all the more dangerous. Thus patience is a virtue. 
But patience under wrong is the condoning of wrong. 
Thus it is a virtue to seek knowledge and to endeavor 
to cultivate the mental powers. But the wicked man 
becomes more capable of evil by reason of his intelli- 
gence. Devils we always think of as intelligent. 

And thus that pseudo-charity that discards and denies 
justice works evil. On the one side, it demoralizes its 
recipients, outraging that human dignity which as you 
say '' God himself treats with reverence," and turning 
into beggars and paupers men who to become self-sup- 
porting, self-respecting citizens need only the restitution 
of what Grod has given them. On the other side, it acts 
as an anodyne to the consciences of those who are living 
on the robbery of their fellows, and fosters that moral 
delusion and spiritual pride that Christ doubtless had in 
mind when he said it was easier for a camel to pass 
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter 
the Kingdom of Heaven. For it leads men steeped in 
injustice, and using their money and their influence to 
bolster up injustice, to think that in giving alms they 



94 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

are doing something more than their duty toward man 
and deserve to be very well thought of by God, and in a 
vague way to attribute to their own goodness what really 
belongs to Grod's goodness. For consider: Who is the 
All-Provider 1 Who is it that as you say, " owes to man 
a storehouse that shall never fail," and which ^'he finds 
only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth/' Is it 
not God? And when, therefore, men, deprived of the 
bounty of their God, are made dependent on the bounty 
of their fellow-creatures, are not these creatures, as it 
Were, put in the place of God, to take credit to them- 
selves for paying obligations that you yourself say God 
owes? 

But worse perhaps than all else is the way in which 
this substituting of vague injunctions to charity for the 
clear-cut demands of justice opens an easy means for the 
professed teachers of the Christian religion of all branches 
and communions to placate Mammon while persuading 
themselves that they are serving God. Had the English 
clergy not subordinated the teaching of justice to the 
teaching of charity — to go no further in illustrating a 
principle of which the whole history of Christendom 
from Constantine's time to our own is witness — the 
Tudor tyranny would never have arisen, and the separa- 
tion of the church been averted; had the clergy of 
France never substituted charity for justice, the mon- 
strous iniquities of the ancient regime would never have 
brought the horrors of the Great Revolution ; and in my 
own country had those who should have preached justice 
not satisfied themselves with preaching kindness, chattel 
slavery could never have demanded the holocaust of our 
civil war. 

No, your Holiness ; as faith without works is dead, as 
men cannot give to God his due while denying to their 
fellows the rights he gave them, so charity unsupported 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 95 

by justice can do nothing to solve the problem of the 
existing condition of labor. Though the rich were to 
"bestow all their goods to feed the poor and give their 
bodies to be burned/' poverty would continue while 
property in land continues. 

Take the case of the rich man to-day who is honestly 
desirous of devoting his wealth to the improvement of 
the condition of labor. What can he do 1 

Bestow his wealth on those who need it? He may 
help some who deserve it, but will not improve general 
conditions. And against the good he may do will be the 
danger of doing harm. 

Build churches? Under the shadow of churches 
poverty festers and the vice that is born of it breeds. 

Build schools and colleges? Save as it may lead men 
to see the iniquity of private property in land, increased 
education can effect nothing for mere laborers, for as 
education is diffused the wages of education sink. 

Establish hospitals ? Why, already it seems to laborers 
that there are too many seeking work, and to save and 
prolong life is to add to the pressure. 

Build model tenements? Unless he cheapens house 
accommodations he but drives further the class he would 
benefit, and as he cheapens house accommodations he 
brings more to seek employment and cheapens wages. 

Institute laboratories, scientific schools, workshops for 
physical experiments ? He but stimulates invention and 
discovery, the very forces that, acting on a society based 
on private property in land, are crushing labor as between 
the upper and the nether millstone. 

Promote emigration from places where wages are low 
to places where they are somewhat higher? If he does, 
even those whom he at first helps to emigrate will soon 
turn on him to demand that such emigration shall be 
stopped as reducing their wages. 



96 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

Give away what land he may have, or refuse to take 
rent for it, or let it at lower rents than the market price ? 
He will simply make new landowners or partial land- 
owners; he may make some individuals the richer, but 
he will do nothing to improve the general condition of 
labor. 

Or, bethinking himself of those public-spirited citizens 
of classic times who spent great sums in improving their 
native cities, shaU he try to beautify the city of his birth 
or adoption ? Let him widen and straighten narrow and 
crooked streets, let him build parks and erect fountains, 
let him open tramways and bring in railroads, or in any 
way make beautiful and attractive his chosen city, and 
what will be the result? Must it not be that those who 
appropriate God's bounty will take his also ? Will it not 
be that the value of land will go up, and that the net 
result of his benefactions will be an increase of rents 
and a bounty to landowners? Why, even the mere 
announcement that he is going to do such things will 
start speculation and send up the value of land by leaps 
and bounds. 

What, then, can the rich man do to improve the condi- 
tion of labor ? 

He can do nothing at all except to use his strength for 
the abolition of the great primary wrong that robs men 
of their birthright. The justice of God laughs at the 
attempts of men to substitute anything else for it. 

If when in speaking of the practical measures your 
Holiness proposes, I did not note the moral injunctions 
that the Encyclical contains, it is not because we do not 
think morality practical. On the contrary it seems to 
us that in the teachings of morality is to be found the 
highest practicality, and that the question. What is wise ? 
may always safely be subordinated to the question. What 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII. 97 

is right ? But your Holiness in the Encyclical expressly 
deprives the moral truths you state of all real bearing on 
the condition of labor, just as the American people, by 
their legalization of chattel slavery, used to deprive of all 
practical meaning the declaration they deem their funda- 
mental charter, and were accustomed to read solemnly 
on every national anniversary. That declaration asserts 
that "We hold these truths to be seK-evident— that all 
men are created equal; that they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain unalienable rights ; that among these 
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." But what 
did this truth mean on the lips of men who asserted that 
one man was the rightful property of another man who 
had bought him ; who asserted that the slave was robbing 
the master in running away, and that the man or the 
woman who helped the fugitive to escape, or even gave 
him a cup of cold water in Christ's name, was an acces- 
sory to theft, on whose head the penalties of the state 
should be visited ? 

Consider the moral teachings of the Encyclical : 

You tell us that God owes to man an inexhaustible 
storehouse which he finds only in the land. Yet you 
support a system that denies to the great majority of 
men all right of recourse to this storehouse. 

You tell us that the necessity of labor is a consequence 
of original sin. Yet you support a system that exempts 
a privileged class from the necessity for labor and enables 
them to shift their share and much more than their share 
of labor on others. 

You tell us that Grod has not created us for the perish- 
able and transitory things of earth, but has given us this 
world as a place of exile and not as our true country. 
Yet you tell us that some of the exiles have the exclusive 
right of ownership in this place of common exile, so that 
they may compel their fellow-exiles to pay them for 



98 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

sojourning here, and that this exclusive ownership they 
may transfer to other exiles yet to come, with the same 
right of excluding their fellows. 

You tell us that virtue is the common inheritance of 
all ; that all men are children of God the common Father ; 
that all have the same last end j that all are redeemed by 
Jesus Christ; that the blessings of nature and the gifts 
of grace belong in common to all, and that to all except 
the unworthy is promised the inheritance of the King- 
dom of Heaven ! Yet in all this and through all this you 
insist as a moral duty on the maintenance of a system 
that makes the reservoir of all God's material bounties 
and blessings to man the exclusive property of a few of 
their number — you give us equal rights in heaven, but 
deny us equal rights on earth ! 

It was said of a famous decision of the Supreme Court 
of the United States made just before the civil war, in a 
fugitive-slave case, that "it gave the law to the North 
and the nigger to the South." It is thus that your 
Encyclical gives the gospel to laborers and the earth to 
the landlords. Is it really to be wondered at that there 
are those who sneeringly say, "The priests are ready 
enough to give the poor an equal share in all that is out 
of sight, but they take precious good care that the rich 
shall keep a tight grip on aU that is within sight " ? 

Herein is the reason why the working masses aU over 
the world are turning away from organized religion. 

And why should they not ? What is the office of reli- 
gion if not to point out the principles that ought to 
govern the conduct of men toward each other ; to furnish 
a clear, decisive rule of right which shall guide men in 
aU the relations of life— in the workshop, in the mart, in 
the forum and in the senate, as well as in the church j to 
supply, as it were, a compass by which amid the blasts of 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 99 

passion, the aberrations of greed and the delusions of a 
short-sighted expediency men may safely steer? What 
is the use of a religion that stands palsied and paltering 
in the face of the most momentous problems ? What is 
the use of a religion that whatever it may promise for 
the next world can do nothing to prevent injustice in 
this ? Early Christianity was not such a religion, else it 
would never have encountered the Roman persecutions ; 
else it would never have swept the Roman world. The 
skeptical masters of Rome, tolerant of all gods, careless 
of what they deemed vulgar superstitions, were keenly 
sensitive to a doctrine based on equal rights 5 they feared 
instinctively a religion that inspired slave and proletarian 
with a new hope ; that took for its central figure a cruci- 
fied carpenter ; that taught the equal Fatherhood of God 
and the equal brotherhood of men; that looked for the 
speedy reign of justice, and that prayed, " Tliy Kingdom 
come on Earth ! " 

To-day, the same perceptions, the same aspirations, 
exist among the masses. Man is, as he has been called, 
a religious animal, and can never quite rid himself of the 
feeling that there is some moral government of the 
world, some eternal distinction between wrong and 
right ; can never quite abandon the yearning for a reign 
of righteousness. And to-day, men who, as they think, 
have cast off aU belief in religion, will teU you, even 
though they know not what it is, that with regard to the 
condition of labor something is tvrong I If theology be, as 
St. Thomas of Aquin held it, the sum and focus of the 
sciences, is it not the business of religion to say clearly 
and fearlessly what that wrong is? It was by a deep 
impulse that of old when threatened and perplexed by 
general disaster men came to the oracles to ask. In what 
have we offended the gods ? To-day, menaced by grow- 
ing evils that threaten the very existence of society, men, 



100 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

conscious that something is wrong, are putting the same 
question to the ministers of religion. What is the 
answer they get? Alas, with few exceptions, it is as 
vague, as inadequate, as the answers that used to come 
from heathen oracles. 

Is it any wonder that the masses of men are losing 
faith? 

Let me again state the case that your Encyclical presents : 

What is that condition of labor which as you truly say 
is " the question of the hour," and " fills every mind with 
painful apprehension"? Reduced to its lowest expres- 
sion it is the poverty of men willing to work. And what 
is the lowest expression of this phrase? It is that they 
lack bread— for in that one word we most concisely and 
strongly express all the manifold material satisfactions 
needed by humanity, the absence of which constitutes 
poverty. 

Now what is the prayer of Christendom— the universal 
prayer J the prayer that goes up daily and hourly wher- 
ever the name of Christ is honored; that ascends from 
your Holiness at the high altar of St. Peter's, and that is 
repeated by the youngest child that the poorest Christian 
mother has taught to lisp a request to her Father in 
Heaven ? It is, " Give us this day our daily bread ! " 

Yet where this prayer goes up, daily and hourly, men 
lack bread. Is it not the business of religion to say why ? 
If it cannot do so, shaU not scoffers mock its ministers 
as Blias mocked the prophets of Baal, saying, " Cry with 
a louder voice, for he is a god ; and perhaps he is talking, 
or is in an inn, or on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep, 
and must be awaked ! " What answer can those min- 
isters give? Either there is no God, or he is asleep, or 
else he does give men their daily bread, and it is in some 
way intercepted. 



OPEN LETTEE TO POPE LEO XIII. 101 

Here is the answer, the only true answer : If men lack 
bread it is not that God has not done his part in pro- 
viding it. If men willing to labor are cursed with pov- 
erty, it is not that the storehouse that God owes men has 
failed; that the daily supply he has promised for the 
daily wants of his children is not here in abundance. It 
is, that impiously violating the benevolent intentions of 
their Creator, men have made land private property, and 
thus given into the exclusive ownership of the few the 
provision that a bountiful Father has made for all. 

Any other answer than that, no matter how it may be 
shrouded in the mere forms of religion, is practically an 
atheistical answer. 



I have written this letter not alone for your Holiness, 
but for all whom I may hope it to reach. But in sending 
it to you personally, and in advance of publication, I 
trust that it may be by you personally read and weighed. 
In setting forth the grounds of our belief and in pointing 
out considerations which it seems to us you have unfor- 
tunately overlooked, I have written frankly, as was my 
duty on a matter of such momentous importance, and as 
I am sure you would have me write. But I trust I have 
done so without offense. For your office I have pro- 
found respect, for yourself personally the highest esteem. 
And while the views I have opposed seem to us erroneous 
and dangerous, we do not wish to be understood as in 
the slightest degree questioning either your sincerity or 
intelligence in adopting them. For they are views aU 
but universally held by the professed religious teachers 
of Christendom, in aU communions and creeds, and that 
have received the sanction of those looked to as the wise 
and learned. Under the conditions that have surrounded 
you, and under the pressure of so many high duties and 



102 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

responsibilities, culminating in tliose of your present 
exalted position, it is not to be expected tbat you should 
have hitherto thought to question them. But I trust 
that the considerations herein set forth may induce you 
to do so, and even if the burdens and cares that beset 
you shall now make impossible the careful consideration 
that should precede expression by one in your responsible 
position I trust that what I have written may not be 
without use to others. 

And, as I have said, we are deeply grateful for your 
Encyclical. It is much that by so conspicuously calling 
attention to the condition of labor, you have recalled the 
fact forgotten by so many that the social evils and 
problems of our time directly and pressingly concern the 
church. It is much that you should thus have placed 
the stamp of your disapproval on that impious doctrine 
which directly and by implication has been so long and 
so widely preached in the name of Christianity, that the 
sufferings of the poor are due to mysterious decrees of 
Providence which men may lament but cannot alter. 
Your Encyclical will be seen by those who carefully 
analyze it to be directed not against socialism, which in 
moderate form you favor, but against what we in the 
United States call the single tax. Yet we have no solici- 
tude for the truth save that it shall be brought into dis- 
cussion, and we recognize in your Holiness's Encyclical 
a most efficient means of promoting discussion, and of 
promoting discussion along the lines that we deem of the 
greatest importance — the lines of morahty and religion. 
In this you deserve the gratitude of all who would follow 
truth, for it is of the nature of truth always to prevail 
over error where discussion goes on. 

And the truth for which we stand has now made such 
progress in the minds of men that it must be heard ; that 
it can never be stifled j that it must go on conquering 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO Xni. 103 

and to conquer. Far-off Australia leads the van, and 
has already taken the first steps toward the single tax. 
In Great Britain, in the United States, and in Canada, 
the question is on the verge of practical politics and soon 
will be the burning issue of the time. Contiuental 
Europe cannot long linger behind. Faster than ever 
the world is moving. 

Forty years ago slavery seemed stronger in the United 
States than ever before, and the market price of slaves— 
both working slaves and breeding slaves— was higher 
than it had ever been before, for the title of the owner 
seemed growing more secure. In the shadow of the HaU 
where the equal rights of man had been solemnly pro- 
claimed, the manacled fugitive was dragged back to 
bondage, and on what to American tradition was our 
Marathon of freedom, the slave-master boasted that he 
would yet caU the roU of his chattels. 

Yet forty years ago, though the party that was to 
place Abraham Lincoln in the Presidential chair had not 
been formed, and nearly a decade was yet to pass ere the 
signal-gun was to ring out, slavery, as we may now see, 
was doomed. 

To-day a wider, deeper, more beneficent revolution is 
brooding, not over one country, but over the world. 
God's truth impels it, and forces mightier than he has 
ever before given to man urge it on. It is no more in 
the power of vested wrongs to stay it than it is in man's 
power to stay the sun. The stars in their courses fight 
against Sisera, and in the ferment of to-day, to him 
who hath ears to hear, the doom of industrial slavery is 
sealed. 

Where shall the dignitaries of the church be in the 
struggle that is coming, nay that is already here? On 
the side of justice and liberty, or on the side of wrong 
and slavery? with the delivered when the timbrels shall 



104 THE CONDITION OF LABOE. 

sound again, or with the chariots and the horsemen that 
again shall be engulfed in the sea ? 

As to the masses, there is little fear where they will be. 
Already, among those who hold it with religious fervor, 
the single tax counts great numbers of Catholics, many 
priests, secular and regular, and at least some bishops, 
while there is no communion or denomination of the 
many into which English-speaking Christians are divided 
where its advocates are not to be found. 

Last Sunday evening in the New York church that of 
all churches in the world is most richly endowed, I saw 
the cross carried through its aisles by a hundred choris- 
ters, and heard a priest of that English branch of the 
church that three hundred years since was separated 
from your obedience, declare to a great congregation 
that the labor question was at bottom a religious ques- 
tion J that it could only be settled on the basis of moral 
right; that the first and clearest of rights is the equal 
right to the use of the physical basis of all life ; and that 
no human titles could set aside God's gift of the land to 
all men. 

And as the cross moved by, and the choristers sang, 

Eaise ye the Christian's war-cry — 
The Cross of Christ the Lord ! 

men to whom it was a new thing bowed their heads, and 
in hearts long steeled against the church, as the willing 
handmaid of oppression, rose the " God wills it ! " of the 
grandest and mightiest of crusades. 

Servant of the Servants of God! I call you by the 
strongest and sweetest of your titles. In your hands 
more than in those of any living man lies the power to 
say the word and make the sign that shall end an unnat- 
ural divorce, and marry again to religion all that is pure 
and high in social aspiration. 



OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIIL 105 

Wishing for your Holiness the chiefest of all blessings, 
that you may know the truth and be freed by the truth j 
wishing for you the days and the strength that may 
enable you by the great service you may render to 
humanity to make your pontificate through all coming 
time most glorious; and with the profound respect due 
to your personal character and to your exalted office, I am, 

Yours sincerely, 

Henry George. 

New York, September 11, 1891. 



APPENDIX 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER 

OF 

POPE LEO XIII. 

ON 

THE CONDITION OF LABOR 



OFFICIAL TRANSLATION 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 



TO our Venerahle Brethren, all Patriarchs, Primates, 
Archbishops, and Bishops of the Catholic World, in 
grace and communion with the Apostolic See, Pope Leo XIII. 

Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic 
Benediction. 

1. It is not surprising that the spirit of revolutionary 
change, which has so long been predominant in the 
nations of the world, should have passed beyond politics 
and made its influence felt in the cognate field of prac- 
tical economy. The elements of a conflict are unmis- 
takable : the growth of industry, and the surprising 
discoveries of science ; the changed relations of masters 
and workmen ; the enormous fortunes of individuals, and 
the poverty of the masses; the increased self-reliance 
and the closer mutual combination of the working popu- 
lation; and, finally, a general moral deterioration. The 
momentous seriousness of the present state of things 
just now fills every mind with painful apprehension; 
wise men discuss it; practical men propose schemes; 
popular meetings, legislatures, and sovereign princes, all 
are occupied with it— and there is nothing which has a 
deeper hold on public attention. 



110 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

2. Therefore, Venerable Brethren, as on former occa- 
sions, when it seemed opportune to refute false teaching, 
"We have addressed you in the interest of the Church and 
of the commonweal, and have issued Letters on Political 
Power, on Human Liberty, on the Christian Constitution 
of the State, and on similar subjects, so now We have 
thought it useful to speak on the Condition of Labor. 
It is a matter on which We have touched once or twice 
already. But in this Letter the responsibihty of the 
Apostolic office urges Us to treat the question expressly 
and at length, in order that there may be no mistake as 
to the principles which truth and justice dictate for its 
settlement. The discussion is not easy, nor is it free 
from danger. It is not easy to define the relative rights 
and the mutual duties of the wealthy and of the poor, of 
capital and of labor. And the danger lies in this, that 
crafty agitators constantly make use of these disputes 
to pervert men's judgments and to stir up the people to 
sedition. 

3. But all agree, and there can be no question what- 
ever, that some remedy must be found, and quickly 
found, for the misery and wretchedness which press so 
heavily at this moment on the large majority of the very 
poor. The ancient workmen's Guilds were destroyed in 
the last century, and no other organization took their 
place. Public institutions and the laws have repudiated 
the ancient religion. Hence by degrees it has come to 
pass that Working-Men have been given over, isolated 
and defenseless, to the callousness of employers, and the 
greed of unrestrained competition. The evil has been 
increased by rapacious Usury, which, although more than 
once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a 
different form but with the same guilt, still practised by 
avaricious and grasping men. And to this must be 
added the custom of working by contract, and the con- 



ENCYCLICAL LETTEE OF POPE LEO XHI. Ill 

centration of so many branches of trade in the hands of a 
few individuals, so that a small number of very rich men 
have been able to lay upon the masses of the poor a yoke 
little better than slavery itself. 

4. To remedy these evils the Socialists, working on the 
poor man^s envy of the rich, endeavor to destroy private 
property, and maintain that individual possessions should 
become the common property of all, to be administered 
by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that, 
by thus transferring property from private persons to 
the community, the present evil state of things will be 
set to rights, because each citizen will then have his 
equal share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their 
prop%als are so clearly futile for all practical purposes, 
that if they were carried out the working-man himself 
would be among the first to suffer. Moreover they are 
emphatically unjust, because they would rob the lawful 
possessor, bring the State into a sphere that is not its 
own, and cauHa complete confusion in the community. 

5. It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages 
in remunerative labor, the very reason and motive of his 
work is to obtain property, and to hold it as his own 
private possession. If one man hires out to another his 
strength or his industry, he does this for the purpose of 
receiving in return what is necessary for food and living 5 
he thereby expressly proposes to acquire a full and real 
right, not only to the remuneration, but also to the dis- 
posal of that remuneration as he pleases. Thus, if he 
lives sparingly, saves money, and invests his savings, for 
greater security, in land, the land in such a case is only 
his wages in another form ; and consequently, a working- 
man^s little estate thus purchased should be as completely 
at his own disposal as the wages he receives for his labor. 
But it is precisely in this power of disposal that owner- 
ship consists, whether the property be land or movable 



112 THE CONDITION OF LABOB. 

goods. The Socialists^ therefore, in endeavoring to 
transfer the possessions of individuals to the commnnity, 
strike at the interests of every wage-earner, for they 
deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and 
thus of all hope and possibility of increasing his stock 
and of bettering his condition in life. 

6. What is of still greater importance, however, is that 
the remedy they propose is manifestly against justice. 
For every man has by nature the right to possess 
property as his own. This is one of the chief points of 
distinction between man and the animal creation. For 
the brute has no power of self-direction, but is governed 
by two chief instincts, which keep his powers alert, move 
him to use his strength, and determine him to action 
without the power of choice. These instincts are seK- 
preservation and the propagation of the species. Both 
can attain their purpose by means of things which are 
close at hand ; beyond their surroundings the brute crea- 
tion cannot go, for they are moved to action by sensi- 
bility alone, and by the things which sense perceives. 
But with man it is different indeed. He possesses, on 
the one hand, the full perfection of animal nature, and 
therefore he enjoys, at least as much as the rest of the 
animal race, the fruition of the things of the body. But 
animality, however perfect, is far from being the whole 
of humanity, and is indeed humanity's humble handmaid, 
made to serve and obey. It is the mind, or the reason, 
which is the chief thing in us who are human beings ; it 
is this which makes a human being human, and distin- 
guishes him essentially and completely from the brute. 
And on this account— viz., that man alone among animals 
possesses reason — it must be within his right to have 
things not merely for temporary and momentary use, as 
other living beings have them, but in stable and perma- 
nent possession; he must have not only things which 



ENCYCLICAL LETTEE OF POPE LEO XIII. 113 

perish in the using, but also those which, though used, 
remain for use in the future. 

7. This becomes still more clearly evident if we con- 
sider man^s nature a little more deeply. For man, 
comprehending by the power of his reason things innu- 
merable, and joining the future with the present— being, 
moreover, the master of his own acts— governs himself 
by the foresight of his counsel, under the eternal law and 
the power of God, Whose Providence governs all things 5 
wherefore it is in his power to exercise his choice not 
only on things which regard his present welfare, but also 
on those which will be for his advantage in time to come. 
Hence man not only can possess the fruits of the earth, 
but also the earth itseK ; for of the products of the earth 
he can make provision for the future. Man's needs do 
not die out, but recur ; satisfied to-day, they demand new 
supplies to-morrow. Nature, therefore, owes to man a 
storehouse that shall never fail, the daily supply of his 
daily wants. And this he finds only in the inexhaustible 
fertility of the earth. 

8. Nor must we, at this stage, have recourse to the 
State. Man is older than the State; and he holds the 
right of providing for the life of his body prior to the 
formation of any State. And to say that Grod has given 
the earth to the use and enjoyment of the universal 
human race is not to deny that there can be private 
property. For God has granted the earth to mankind in 
general ; not in the sense that all without distinction can 
deal with it as they please, but rather that no part of it 
has been assigned to any one in particular, and that the 
limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by 
man's own industry and the laws of individual peoples. 
Moreover the earth, though divided among private 
owners, ceases not thereby to minister to the needs of 
all J for there is no one who does not live on what the 



114 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

land brings forth. Those who do not possess the soil, 
contribute their labor j so that it may be truly said that 
all human subsistence is derived either from labor on 
one's own land, or from some laborious industry which 
is paid for either in the produce of the land itself or in 
that which is exchanged for what the land brings forth. 

9. Here, again, we have another proof that private 
ownership is according to nature's law. For that which 
is required for the preservation of life, and for life's well- 
being, is produced in great abundance by the earth, but 
not until man has brought it into cultivation and lavished 
upon it his care and skiU. Now, when man thus spends 
the industry of his mind and the strength of his body in 
procuring the fruits of nature, by that act he makes his 
own that portion of nature's field which he cultivates — 
that portion on which he leaves, as it were, the impress 
of his own personality ; and it cannot but be just that he 
should possess that portion as his own, and should have 
a right to keep it without molestation. 

10. These arguments are so strong and convincing 
that it seems surprising that certain obsolete opinions 
should now be revived in opposition to what is here laid 
down. We are told that it is right for private persons 
to have the use of the soil and the fruits of their land, 
but that it is unjust for any one to possess as owner 
either the land on which he has built or the estate which 
he has cultivated. But those who assert this do not 
perceive that they are robbing man of what his own 
labor has produced. For the soil which is tilled and cul- 
tivated with toil and skill utterly changes its condition ; 
it was wild before, it is now fruitful ; it was barren, and 
now it brings forth in abundance. That which has thus 
altered and improved it becomes so truly part of itself as 
to be in great measure indistinguishable and inseparable 
from it. Is it just that the fruit of a man's sweat and 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XHI. 115 

labor should be enjoyed by another? As effects follow 
their cause, so it is just and right that the results of labor 
should belong to him who has labored. 

11. With reason, therefore, the common opinion of 
mankiQd, little affected by the few dissentients who have 
maintained the opposite view, has found in the study of 
nature, and in the law of Nature herself, the foundation 
of the division of property, and has consecrated by the 
practice of aU ages the principle of private ownership, 
as being preeminently in conformity with human nature, 
and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to 
the peace and tranquillity of human life. The same 
principle is confirmed and enforced by the civil laws— 
laws which, as long as they are just, derive their binding 
force from the law of nature. The authority of the 
Divine Law adds its sanction, forbidding us in the gravest 
terms even to covet that which is another^s : — T^oi* sJialt 
not covet thy neiglibor^s wife ; nor his house, nor his field, nor 
his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his 
ass, nor anything which is his.* 

12. The rights here spoken of, belonging to each indi- 
vidual man, are seen in a much stronger light if they are 
considered in relation to man's social and domestic obli- 
gations. 

13. In choosing a state of life, it is indisputable that 
an are at full liberty either to foUow the counsel of Jesus 
Christ as to the virginity, or to enter into the bonds of 
marriage. No human law can aboUsh the natural and 
primitive right of marriage, or in any way limit the chief 
and principal purpose of marriage, ordained by God's 
authority from the beginning: Increase and multiply^ 
Thus we have the Family ; the " society " of a man's own 
household j a society limited indeed in numbers, but a 

* Deuteronomy v. 21, t Genesis i. 28. 



116 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

true '^ society," anterior to every kind of State or nation, 
with rights and duties of its own, totally independent of 
the commonwealth. 

14. That right of property, therefore, which has been 
proved to belong naturally to individual persons, must 
also belong to a man in his capacity of head of a family ; 
nay, such a person must possess this right so much the 
more clearly in proportion as his position multiplies his 
duties. For it is a most sacred law of nature that a 
father must provide food and all necessaries for those 
whom he has begotten; and, similarly, nature dictates 
that a man's children, who carry on, as it were, and con- 
tinue his own personality, should be provided by him 
with all that is needful to enable them honorably to keep 
themselves from want and misery in the uncertainties of 
this mortal hfe. Now, in no other way can a father 
effect this except by the ownership of profitable property, 
which he can transmit to his children by inheritance. A 
family, no less than a State, is, as We have said, a true 
society, governed by a power within itself, that is to say 
by the father. Wherefore, provided the limits be not 
transgressed which are prescribed by the very purposes 
for which it exists, the Family has at least equal rights 
with the State in the choice and pursuit of those 
things which are needful to its preservation and its just 
liberty. 

15. We say, at least equal rights ; for since the domes- 
tic household is anterior both in idea and in fact to the 
gathering of men into a commonwealth, the former must 
necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to 
those of the latter, and which rest more immediately on 
nature. If the citizens of a State— that is to say, the 
Families— on entering into association and fellowship, 
experienced at the hands of the State hindrance instead 
of help, and found their rights attacked instead of being 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIIL 117 

protected, such association were rather to be repudiated 
than sought after. 

16. The idea, then, that the civil government should, 
at its own discretion, penetrate and pervade the family 
and the household, is a great and pernicious mistake. 
True, if a family finds itself in great difficulty, utterly 
friendless, and without prospect of help, it is right that 
extreme necessity be met by public aid ; for each family 
is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if 
within the waUs of the household there occur grave dis- 
turbance of mutual rights, the public power must inter- 
fere to force each party to give the other what is due ; 
for this is not to rob citizens of their rights, but justly 
and properly to safeguard and strengthen them. But 
the rulers of the State must go no further : nature bids 
them stop here. Paternal authority can neither be abol- 
ished by the State, nor absorbed; for it has the same 
source as human life itself. "The child belongs to the 
father," and is, as it were, the continuation of the father's 
personality ; and, to speak with strictness, the child takes 
its place in civil society not in its own right, but in its 
quality as a member of the family in which it is begotten. 
And it is for the very reason that "the child belongs to 
the father" that, as St. Thomas of Aquin says, "before it 
attains the use of free will, it is in the power and care of 
its parents."* The Socialists, therefore, in setting aside 
the parent and introducing the providence of the State, 
act against natural justice, and threaten the very existence 
of family life. 

17. And such interference is not only unjust, but it is 
quite certain to harass and disturb all classes of citizens 
and to subject them to odious and intolerable slavery. 
It would open the door to envy, to evil speaking, and to 

* St. Thomas, Summa Thedlogica, 2a 28e Q. x. Art. 12. 



118 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

quarreling; the sources of wealth would themselves run 
dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his 
talents or his industry ; and that ideal equality of which 
so much is said would in reality be the leveling down of 
all to the same condition of misery and dishonor. 

18. Thus it is clear that the main tenet of Socialism^ 
the community of goods, must be utterly rejected; for 
it would injure those whom it is intended to benefit, it 
would be contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and 
it would introduce confusion and disorder into the com- 
monwealth. Our first and most fundamental principle, 
therefore, when we undertake to alleviate the condition 
of the masses, must be the inviolability of private prop- 
erty. This laid down, We go on to show where We must 
find the remedy that We seek. 

19. We approach the subject with confidence, and in 
the exercise of the rights which belong to Us. For no 
practical solution of this question will ever be found 
without the assistance of Religion and of the Church. It 
is We who are the chief guardian of Religion and the 
chief dispenser of what belongs to the Church, and We 
must not by silence neglect the duty which lies upon Us. 
Doubtless this most serious question demands the atten- 
tion and the efforts of others besides Ourselves— of the 
rulers of States, of employers of labor, of the wealthy, 
and of the working population themselves for whom We 
plead. But We affirm without hesitation, that all the 
striving of men will be vain if they leave out the Church. 
It is the Church that proclaims from the Gospel those 
teachings by which the conflict can be put an end to, or 
at the least made far less bitter; the Church uses its 
efforts not only to enlighten the mind, but to direct by 
its precepts the life and conduct of men; the Church 
improves and ameliorates the condition of the working- 
man by numerous useful organizations ; does its best to 



ENCYCLICAL LETTEE OF POPE LEO XIH. 119 

enlist the services of all ranks in discussing and endea.- 
voring to meet, in the most practical way, the claims of 
the working-classes; and acts on the decided view that 
for these purposes recourse should be had, in due mea- 
sure and degree, to the help of the law and of State 
authority. 

20. Let it be laid down, in the first place, that human- 
ity must remain as it is. It is impossible to reduce 
human society to a level. The Socialists may do their 
utmost, but all striving against nature is vain. There 
naturally exist among mankind innumerable differences 
of the most important kind; people differ in capability, 
in diligence, in health, and in strength; and unequal 
fortune is a necessary result of inequality in condition. 
Such inequahty is far from being disadvantageous either 
to individuals or to the community ; social and public life 
can only go on by the help of various kinds of capacity 
and the playing of many parts ; and each man, as a rule, 
chooses the part which peculiarly suits his case. As 
regards bodily labor, even had man never fallen from the 
state of innocence, he would not have been wholly unoccu- 
pied; but that which would then have been his free 
choice and his delight, became afterwards compulsory, 
and the painful expiation of his sin. Cursed be the earth 
in thy woric ; in thy labor thou shalt eat of it all the days of 
thy life* In like manner, the other pains and hardships 
of life will have no end or cessation on this earth; for 
the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and 
they must be with man as long as life lasts. To suffer 
and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity ; let men 
try as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever 
succeed in banishing from human life the ills and 
troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend 

* Genesis iii. 17. 



120 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

differently— who hold out to a hard-pressed people free- 
dom from pain and trouble, undisturbed repose, and 
constant enjoyment— they cheat the people and impose 
upon them, and their lying promises will only make the 
evil worse than before. There is nothing more useful 
than to look at the world as it really is— and at the same 
time to look elsewhere for a remedy to its troubles. 

21. The great mistake that is made in the matter now 
under consideration is to possess one's self of the idea 
that class is naturally hostile to class j that rich and poor 
are intended by nature to live at war with one another. 
So irrational and so false is this view, that the exact 
contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the 
human body is the result of the disposition of the mem- 
bers of the body, so in a State it is ordained by nature 
that these two classes should exist in harmony and agree- 
ment, and should, as it were, fit into one another, so as 
to maintain the equilibrium of the body politic. Each 
requires the other j capital cannot do without labor, nor 
labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in 
pleasantness and good order; perpetual conflict neces- 
sarily produces confusion and outrage. Now, in pre- 
venting such strife as this, and in making it impossible, 
the ef&cacy of Christianity is marvelous and manifold. 
First of all, there is nothing more powerful than Eehgion 
(of which the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in 
drawing rich and poor together, by reminding each class 
of its duties to the other, and especially of the duties of 
justice. Thus Religion teaches the laboring-man and the 
workman to carry out honestly and well all equitable 
agreements freely made; never to injure capital, or to 
outrage the person of an employer; never to employ 
violence in representing his own cause, or to engage in 
riot or disorder ; and to have nothing to do with men of 
evil principles, who work upon the people with artful 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XHI. 121 

promises, and raise foolish hopes which usually end in 
disaster and in repentance when too late. Religion 
teaches the rich man and the employer that their work- 
people are not their slaves; that they must respect in 
every man his dignity as a man and as a Christian ; that 
labor is nothing to be ashamed of, if we listen to right 
reason and to Christian philosophy, but is an honorable 
employment, enabling a man to sustain his life in an 
upright and creditable way ; and that it is shameful and 
inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or 
to look upon them merely as so much muscle or physical 
power. Thus, again. Religion teaches that, as among the 
workman^s concerns are Religion herself and things 
spiritual and mental, the employer is bound to see that 
he has time for the duties of piety; that he be not 
exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occa- 
sions ; and that he be not led away to neglect his home 
and family or to squander his wages. Then, again, the 
employer must never tax his work-people beyond their 
strength, nor employ them in work unsuited to their sex 
or age. His great and principal obligation is to give to 
every one that which is just. Doubtless before we can 
decide whether wages are adequate, many things have to 
be considered ; but rich men and masters should remem- 
ber this— that to exercise pressure for the sake of gain 
upon the indigent and the destitute, and to make one's 
profit out of the need of another is condemned by all 
laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages 
that are his due is a crime which cries to the avenging 
anger of Heaven. Behold, the hire of the laborers . . . 
tvhich hy fraud hath heen Icept hack dy you, crieth ; and the 
cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sdb- 
aoth* Finally, the rich must religiously refrain from 

* St. James v. 4. 



122 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

cutting down the workman's earnings, either by force, by 
fraud, or by usurious dealing ; and with the more reason 
because the poor man is weak and unprotected, and 
because his slender means should be sacred in proportion 
to their scantiness. 

22. Were these prospects carefully obeyed and fol- 
lowed, would not strife die out and cease ? 

23. But the Church, with Jesus Christ for its Master 
and Guide, aims higher still. It lays down precepts yet 
more perfect, and tries to bind class to class in friendli- 
ness and good understanding. The things of this earth 
cannot be understood or valued rightly without taking 
into consideration the life to come, the life that will last 
forever. Exclude the idea of futurity, and the very 
notion of what is good and right would perish j nay, the 
whole system of the universe would become a dark and 
unfathomable mystery. The great truth which we learn 
from Nature herseK is also the grand Christian dogma 
on which Religion rests as on its base — that when we 
have done with this present life then shall we really 
begin to live. God has not created us for the perishable 
and transitory things of earth, but for things heavenly 
and everlasting; He has given us this world as a place 
of exile, and not as our true country. Money, and the 
other things which men call good and desirable— we may 
have them in abundance, or we may want them alto- 
gether ; as far as eternal happiness is concerned, it is no 
matter; the only thing that is important is to use them 
aright. Jesus Christ, when He redeemed us with plentiful 
redemption, took not away the pains and sorrows which 
in such large proportion make up the texture of our 
mortal life ; He transformed them into motives of virtue 
and occasions of merit ; and no man can hope for eternal 
reward unless he follow in the blood-stained footprints 
of his Saviour. If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XHL 123 

with Him* His labors and His sufferings, accepted by 
His own free will, have marvelously sweetened all suffer- 
ing and all labor. And not only by His example, but by 
His grace and by the hope of everlasting recompense. He 
has made pain and grief more easy to endure ; for that 
which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, 
worJceth for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight 
of glory, j 

24. Therefore those whom fortune favors are warned 
that freedom from sorrow and abundance of earthly 
riches are no guaranty of the beatitude that shall never 
end, but rather the contrary; J that the rich should 
tremble at the threatenings of Jesus Christ— threatenings 
so strange in the mouth of Our Lord;§ and that a most 
strict account must be given to the Supreme Judge for 
all that we possess. The chiefest and most excellent rule 
for the right use of money is one which the heathen 
philosophers indicated, but which the Church has traced 
out clearly, and has not only made known to men's 
minds, but has impressed upon their lives. It rests on 
the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the 
possession of money, and another to have a right to use 
money as one pleases. Private ownership, as we have 
seen, is the natural right of man; and to exercise that 
right, especially as members of society, is not only 
lawful, but absolutely necessary. It is lawful, says St. 
Thomas of Aquin, for a man to hold private property ; and 
it is also necessary for the carrying on of human life.\\ But 
if the question be asked. How must one's possessions be 
used ? the Church replies without hesitation in the words 
of the same holy Doctor : Man should not consider his out- 



* 2 Timothy ii. 12. t 2 Corinthians iv. 17. 

t St. Matthew xix. 23, 24. § St. Luke vi. 24, 25. 

11 2a 2sB Q. Ixvi. Art. 2. 



124 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

ward possessions as Ms own, hut as common to all, so as to 
share them mthout difficulty when others are in need. 
Whence the Apostle saith, Command the rich of this world 
. . . to give with ease, to communicate* True, no one is 
commanded to distribute to others that which is required 
for his own necessities and those of his household; nor 
even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up 
becomingly his condition in life ; for no one ought to live 
mibecomingly.] But when necessity has been supplied, 
and one's position fairly considered, it is a duty to give 
to the indigent out of that which is over. That which 
remaineth, give alms-X I^ is a duty, not of justice (except 
in extreme cases), but of Christian charity— a duty which 
is not enforced by human law. But the laws and judg- 
ments of men must give place to the laws and judgments 
of Christ the true God, Who in many ways urges on His 
followers the practice of almsgiving — It is more Messed to 
give than to receive ;§ and Who will count a kindness done 
or refused to the poor as done or refused to Himself— as 
long as you did it to one of My least brethren, you did it to 
Me.\\ Thus, to sum up what has been said : Whoever has 
received from the Divine bounty a large share of bless- 
ings, whether they be external and corporeal or gifts of 
the mind, has received them, for the purpose of using 
them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the 
same time, that he may employ them, as the minister of 
God's Providence, for the benefit of others. Se that hath 
a talent, says St. Gregory the Great, let him see that he 
hide it not ; he that hath abundance^ let him arouse himself 
to mercy and generosity ; he that hath art and sMll, let him do 
his best to share the use and utility thereof with his neighbor.^ 



* 2a 288 Q. Ixv. Art. 2. f lUd. Q. xxxii. Art. 6. 

t St. Luke xi. 41. § Acts xx. 35. || St. Matthew xxv. 40. 

51 St. Grregory th.e Great, Horn. ix. in Evangel, n. 7. 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIH. 125 

25. As for those who do not possess the gifts of for- 
tune, they are taught by the Church that, in Grod's sight, 
poverty is no disgrace, and that there is nothing to be 
ashamed of in seeking one^s bread by labor. This is 
strengthened by what we see in Christ Himself, Who 
whereas Se was rich, for our saTces became poor; * and Who, 
being the Son of God, and God Himself, chose to seem 
and to be considered the son of a carpenter— nay, did 
not disdain to spend a great part of His life as a car- 
penter Himself. Is not this the carpenter, the Son of 
Mary f t From the contemplation of this Divine example 
it is easy to understand that the true dignity and excel- 
lence of man lies in his moral qualities, that is, in virtue ; 
that virtue is the common inheritance of all, equally 
within the reach of high and low, rich and poor 5 and 
that virtue, and virtue alone, wherever found, will be fol- 
lowed by the rewards of everlasting happiness. Nay, 
God Himself seems to incline more to those who suffer 
evil 5 for Jesus Christ calls the poor blessed ;j: He lov- 
ingly invites those in labor and grief to come to Him for 
solace ;§ and He displays the tenderest charity to the 
lowly and the oppressed. These reflections cannot fail 
to keep down the pride of those who are well off, and to 
cheer the spirit of the affl.icted; to incline the former to 
generosity and the latter to tranquil resignation. Thus 
the separation which pride would make tends to disap- 
pear, nor will it be difficult to make rich and poor join 
hands in friendly concord. 

26. But, if Christian precepts prevail, the two classes 
will not only be united in the bonds of friendship but 
also in those of brotherly love. For they will understand 

* 2 Corinthians viii. 9. t St. Mark vi. 3. 

t St. Matthew v. 3 : "Blessed are the poor in spirit." 
§ IMd. xi. 28 : " Come to Me, all you that labor and are "burdened, 
and I will refresh you." 



126 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

and feel that all men are the children of the common 
Father, that is, of God -, that all have the same last end, 
which is God Himself, Who alone can make either men 
or angels absolutely and perfectly happy j that all and 
each are redeemed by Jesus Christ and raised to the 
dignity of children of God, and are thus united in bro- 
therly ties both with each other and with Jesus Christ, 
the first-horn among many brethren ; that the blessings of 
nature and the gifts of grace belong in common to the 
whole human race, and that to all, except to those that 
are unworthy, is promised the inheritance of the King- 
dom of Heaven. If sons, heirs also ; heirs indeed of God, 
and co-heirs of Christ* 

27. Such is the scheme of duties and of rights which is 
put forth to the world by the Gospel. Would it not 
seem that strife must quickly cease were society pene- 
trated with ideas like these? 

28. But the Church, not content with pointing out the 
remedy, also applies it. For the Church does its utmost 
to teach and to train men, and to educate them ; and by 
means of its Bishops and Clergy it diffuses its salutary 
teachings far and wide. It strives to influence the mind 
and heart so that all may willingly yield themselves to 
be formed and guided by the commandments of God. It 
is precisely in this fundamental and principal matter, 
on which everything depends, that the Church has a 
power peculiar to itself. The agencies which it employs 
are given it for the very purpose of reaching the hearts 
of men, by Jesus Christ Himself, and derive their effi- 
ciency from God. They alone can touch the innermost 
heart and conscience, and bring men to act from a motive 
of duty, to resist their passions and appetites, to love 
God and their fellow-men with a love that is unique and 

* Romans viii. 17. 



ENCYCLICAL LETTEE OF POPE LEO XJIV 127 

supreme, and courageously to break down every barrier 
which stands in the way of a virtuous life. 

29. On this subject We need only recall for one 
moment the examples written down in history. Of these 
things there cannot be the shadow of doubt 5 for instance, 
that civil society was renovated in every part by the 
teachings of Christianity 5 that in the strength of that 
renewal the human race was lifted up to better things- 
nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to 
so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been 
known before, or will come to pass in the ages that have 
yet to be. Of this beneficent transformation Jesus 
Christ was at once the first cause and the final purpose ; 
as from Him all came, so to Him all was to be referred. 
For when, by the light of the Grospel message, the human 
race came to know the grand mystery of the Incarnation 
of the "Word and the redemption of man, the life of Jesus 
Christ, God and Man, penetrated every race and nation, 
and impregnated them with His faith, His precepts, and 
His laws. And if Society is to be cured now, in no 
other way can it be cured but by a return to the Chris- 
tian life and Christian institutions. When a society is 
perishing, the true advice to give to those who would 
restore it is, to recall it to the principles from which it 
sprang ; for the purpose and perfection of an association 
is to aim at and to attain that for which it was formed ; 
and its operation should be put in motion and inspired 
by the end and object which originally gave it its being. 
So that to fall away from its primal constitution is 
disease ; to go back to it is recovery. And this may be 
asserted with the utmost truth both of the State in 
general and of that body of its citizens— by far the 
greater number— who sustain life by labor. 

30. Neither must it be supposed that the solicitude of 
the Church is so occupied with the spiritual concerns of 



128 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

its children as to neglect their interests temporal and 
earthly. Its desire is that the poor, for example, should 
rise above poverty and wretchedness, and should better 
their condition in life 5 and for this it strives. By the 
very fact that it calls men to virtue and forms them to 
its practice, it promotes this in no slight degree. Chris- 
tian morality, when it is adequately and completely prac- 
tised, conduces of itself to temporal prosperity, for it 
merit? the blessing of that God Who is the source of all 
blessi igs ; it powerfully restrains the lust of possession 
and the lust of pleasure— twin plagues, which too often 
make a man without self-restraint miserable in the midst 
of abundance ;* it makes men supply by economy for the 
want of means, teaching them to be content with frugal 
living, and keeping them out of the reach of those vices 
which eat up not merely small incomes, but large for- 
tunes, and dissipate many a goodly inheritance. 

31. Moreover, the Church intervenes directly in the 
interest of the poor, by setting on foot and keeping up 
many things which it sees to be efficacious in the relief 
of poverty. Here again it has always succeeded so well 
that it has even extorted the praise of its enemies. Such 
was the ardor of brotherly love among the earliest Chris- 
tians that numbers of those who were better off deprived 
themselves of their possessions in order to relieve their 
brethren; whence neither was there any one needy among 
them.j To the order of Deacons, instituted for that very 
purpose, was committed by the Apostles the charge of 
the daily distributions; and the Apostle Paul, though 
burdened with the solicitude of all the churches, hesitated 
not to undertake laborious journeys in order to carry the 
alms of the faithful to the poorer Christians. Tertullian 

* ''The root of all evils is cupidity."—! Tim. vi. 10. 
t Acts iv. 34. 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO Xm. 129 

calls these contributions, given voluntarily by Christians 
in their assemblies, deposits of piety ; because, to cite his 
words, they were employed m feeding the needy j in Tmrying 
them J in the support of hoys and girls destitute of means and 
deprived of their parents, in the care of the aged and in the 
relief of the shipwrecked* 

32. Thus by degrees came into existence the patrimony 
which the Church has guarded with religious care as the 
inheritance of the poor. Nay, to spare them the shame 
of begging, the common Mother of rich and poor has 
exerted herself to gather together funds for the support 
of the needy. The Church has stirred up everywhere 
the heroism of charity, and has established Congrega- 
tions of Religious and many other useful institutions for 
help and mercy, so that there might be hardly any kind 
of suffering which was not visited and relieved. At the 
present day there are many who, like the heathen of old, 
blame and condemn the Church for this beautiful char- 
ity. They would substitute in its place a system of 
State-organized relief. But no human methods will 
ever supply for the devotion and seK-sacrifice of Chris- 
tian charity. Charity, as a virtue, belongs to the Church ; 
for it is no virtue unless it is drawn from the Sacred 
Heart of Jesus Christ ; and he who turns his back on the 
Church cannot be near to Christ. 

33. It cannot, however, be doubted that to attain the 
purpose of which We treat, not only the Church, but all 
human means must conspire. All who are concerned in 
the matter must be of one mind and must act together. It 
is in this, as in the Providence which governs the world ; 
results do not happen save where all the causes cooperate. 

34. Let us now, therefore, inquire what part the State 
should play in the work of remedy and relief. 

* Apologia Secunda, xxxix. 



130 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

35. By the State We here understand, not the partic- 
ular form of government which prevails in this or that 
nation, but the State as rightly understood; that is to 
say, any government conformable in its institutions to 
right reason and natural law, and to those dictates of the 
Divine wisdom which We have expounded in the Encyc- 
lical on the Christian Constitution of the State. The 
first duty, therefore, of the rulers of the State should be 
to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general 
character and administration of the commonwealth, shall 
be such as to produce of themselves public well-being 
and private prosperity. This is the proper office of wise 
statesmanship and the work of the heads of the State. 
Now, a State chiefly prospers and flourishes by morality, 
by well-regulated family life, by respect for religion and 
justice, by the moderation and equal distribution of 
public burdens, by the progress of the arts and of trade, 
by the abundant yield of the land — by everything which 
makes the citizens better and happier. Here, then, it is 
in the power of a ruler to benefit every order of the 
State, and amongst the rest to promote in the highest 
degree the interests of the poor; and this by virtue of 
his office, and without being exposed to any suspicion of 
undue interference— for it is the province of the common- 
wealth to consult for the common good. And the more 
that is done for the working population by the general 
laws of the country, the less need will there be to seek 
for particular means to relieve them. 

36. There is another and a deeper consideration which 
must not be lost sight of. To the State the interests of 
all are equal, whether high or low. The poor are mem- 
bers of the national community equally with the rich; 
they are real component parts, living parts, which make 
up, through the family, the living body; and it need 
hardly be said that they are by fai^ the majority. It 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIH. 131 

would be irrational to neglect one portion of the citizens 
and to favor another j and therefore the public adminis- 
tration must duly and solicitously provide for the weKare 
and the comfort of the working-people, or else that law 
of justice will be violated which ordains that each shall 
have his due. To cite the wise words of St. Thomas of 
Aquin : As the part and the whole are in a certain sense 
identical, the part may in some sense claim what belongs to 
the whole* Among the many and grave duties of rulers 
who would do their best for the people, the first and 
chief is to act with strict justice — with that justice which 
is called in the Schools distributive — toward each and 
every class. 

37. But although all citizens, without exception, can 
and ought to contribute to that common good in which 
individuals share so profitably to themselves, yet it is not 
to be supposed that all can contribute in the same way 
and to the same extent. No matter what changes may 
be made in forms of government, there will always be 
differences and inequalities of condition in the State : 
Society cannot exist or be conceived without them. 
Some there must be who dedicate themselves to the work 
of the commonwealth, who make the laws, who administer 
justice, whose advice and authority govern the nation in 
times of peace, and defend it in war. Such men clearly 
occupy the foremost place in the State, and should be 
held in the foremost estimation, for their work touches 
most nearly and effectively the general interests of the 
community. Those who labor at a trade or calling do 
not promote the general welfare in such a fashion as 
this ; but they do in the most important way benefit the 
nation, though less directly. We have insisted that, 
since it is the end of Society to make men better, the 

* 2a 28B Q. Ixi. Art. 1 ad 2. 



132 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

chief good that Society can be possessed of is Virtue. 
Nevertheless, in all well-constituted States it is a by no 
means unimportant matter to provide those bodily and 
external commodities, the use of which is necessary to virtu- 
ous action* And in the provision of material well-being, 
the labor of the poor— the exercise of their skill and the 
employment of their strength in the culture of the land 
and the workshops of trade— is most ef&cacious and alto- 
gether indispensable. Indeed, their cooperation in this 
respect is so important that it may be truly said that it 
is only by the labor of the working-man that States grow 
rich. Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of 
the poorer population be carefully watched over by the 
Administration, so that they who contribute so largely 
to the advantage of the community may themselves share 
in the benefits they create — that being housed, clothed, 
and enabled to support life, they may find their existence 
less hard and more endurable. It follows that whatever 
shall appear to be conducive to the well-being of those 
who work should receive favorable consideration. Let it 
not be feared that solicitude of this kind wiU injure any 
interest ; on the contrary, it will be to the advantage of 
all; for it cannot but be good for the commonwealth to 
secure from misery those on whom it so largely depends. 
38. We have said that the State must not absorb the 
individual or the family; both should be allowed free 
and untrammeled action as far as is consistent with the 
common good and the interest of others. Nevertheless, 
rulers should anxiously safeguard the community and all 
its parts; the community, because the conservation of 
the community is so emphatically the business of the 
supreme power that the safety of the commonwealth is 
not only the first law, but it is a Government's whole 

* St. Thomas of Aqmn^ J)e Megimine Principium, I. cap. 15. 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XHI. 133 

reason of existence ; and the parts, because both philoso- 
phy and the Gospel agree in laying down that the object 
of the administration of the State should be, not the 
advantage of the ruler but the benefit of those over 
whom he rules. The gift of authority is from God, and 
is, as it were, a participation of the highest of all sover- 
eignties ; and it should be exercised as the power of God 
is exercised— with a fatherly solicitude which not only 
guides the whole, but reaches to details as well. 

39. Whenever the general interest of any particular 
class suffers, or is threatened with, evils which can in no 
other way be met, the public authority must step in to 
meet them. Now, among the interests of the public, as 
of private individuals, are these: that peace and good 
order should be maintained; that family life should be 
carried on in accordance with God's laws and those of 
nature ; that Religion should be reverenced and obeyed ; 
that a high standard of morality should prevail in public 
and private life; that sanctity of justice should be 
respected, and that no one should injure another with 
impunity; that the members of the commonwealth 
should grow up to man's estate strong and robust, and 
capable, if need be, of guarding and defending their 
country. If by a strike, or other combination of work- 
men, there should be imminent danger of disturbance to 
the public peace; or if circumstances were such that 
among the laboring population the ties of family life 
were relaxed; if Religion were found to suffer through 
the workmen not having time and opportunity to prac- 
tise it ; if in workshops and factories there were danger 
to morals through the mixing of the sexes or from any 
occasion of evil; or if employers laid burdens upon the 
workmen which were unjust, or degraded them with 
conditions that were repugnant to their dignity as 
human beings; finally, if health were endangered by 



134 THE CONDITION OP LABOE. 

excessive labor, or by work unsuited to sex or age— in 
these cases, there can be no question that, within certain 
limits, it would be right to call in the help and authority 
of the law. The limits must be determined by the nature 
of the occasion which calls for the law's interference— 
the principle being this, that the law must not undertake 
more, or go further; than is required for the remedy of 
the evil or the removal of the danger. 

40. Rights must be religiously respected wherever they 
are found j and it is the duty of the public authority to 
prevent and punish injury, and to protect each one in 
the possession of his own. Still, when there is question 
of protecting the rights of individuals, the poor and help- 
less have a claim to special consideration. The richer 
population have many ways of protecting themselves, 
and stand less in need of help from the State ; those who 
are badly off have no resources of their own to fall back 
upon, and must chiefly rely upon the assistance of the 
State. And it is for this reason that wage-earners, who 
are undoubtedly among the weak and necessitous, should 
be specially cared for and protected by the common- 
wealth. 

41. Here, however, it will be advisable to advert 
expressly to one or two of the more important details. 
It must be borne in mind that the chief thing to be 
secured is the safeguarding, by legal enactment and 
policy, of private property. Most of all is it essential in 
these times of covetous greed, to keep the multitude 
within the line of dutyj for if all may justly strive to 
better their condition, yet neither justice nor the common 
good allows any one to seize that which belongs to 
another, or, under the pretext of futile and ridiculous 
equality, to lay hands on other people's fortunes. It is 
most true that by far the larger part of the people who 
work prefer to improve themselves by honest labor 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIIL 135 

rather than by doing wrong to others. But there are 
not a few who are imbued with bad principles and are 
anxious for revolutionary change, and whose great pur- 
pose it is to stir up tumult and bring about a policy of 
violence. The authority of the State should intervene to 
put restraint upon these disturbers, to save the workmen 
from their seditious arts, and to protect lawful owners 
from spoliation. 

42. When work-people have recourse to a strike, it is 
frequently because the hours of labor are too long, or the 
work too hard, or because they consider their wages 
insufficient. The grave inconvenience of this not uncom- 
mon occurrence should be obviated by public remedial 
measures ; for such paralysis of labor not only affects the 
masters and their work-people, but is extremel}^ injurious 
to trade, and to the general interests of the public j 
moreover, on such occasions, violence and disorder are 
generally not far off, and thus it frequently happens that 
the public peace is threatened. The laws should be 
beforehand, and prevent these troubles from arising j 
they should lend their influence and authority to the 
removal in good time of the causes which lead to conflicts 
between masters and those whom they employ. 

43. But if the owners of property must be made 
secure, the Workman, too, has property and possessions 
in which he must be protected ; and, first of all, there are 
his spiritual and mental interests. Life on earth, how- 
ever good and desirable in itself, is not the final purpose 
for which man is created; it is only the way and the 
means to that attainment of truth, and that practice of 
goodness in which the full life of the soul consists. It is 
the soul which is made after the image and likeness of 
God ; it is in the soul that sovereignty resides, in virtue 
of which man is commanded to rule the creatures below 
him, and to use all the earth and the ocean for his profit 



136 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

and advantage. Fill the earth and subdue it ; and rule over 
the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living 
creatures which move upon the earth* In this respect all 
men are equal j there is no difference between rich and 
poor, master and servant, ruler and ruled, for the same is 
lord over all.] No man may outrage with impunity that 
human dignity which God Himself treats uith reverence, 
nor stand in the way of that higher life which is the prep- 
aration for the eternal life of Heaven. Nay, more; a 
man has here no power over himself. To consent to any 
treatment which is calculated to defeat the end and pur- 
pose of his being is beyond his right ; he cannot give up 
his soul to servitude ; for it is not man's own rights which 
are here in question, but the rights of God, most sacred 
and inviolable. 

44. From this follows the obligation of the cessation 
of work and labor on Sundays and certain festivals. 
This rest from labor is not to be understood as mere idle- 
ness; much less must it be an occasion of spending 
money and of vicious excess, as many would desire it to 
be ; but it should be rest from labor consecrated by reli- 
gion. Repose united with religious observance disposes 
man to forget for a while the business of this daily life, 
and to turn his thoughts to heavenly things and to the 
worship which he so strictly owes to the Eternal Deity. 
It is this, above all, which is the reason and motive of 
the Sunday rest ; a rest sanctioned by God's great law of 
the ancient covenant, Remember thou Jceep holy the Sabbath 
I)ay,\ and taught to the world by His own mysterious 
" rest " after the creation of man ; He rested on the seventh 
day from all Sis worJc which He had done.^ 

45. If we turn now to things exterior and corporeal, 

* Genesis i. 28. f Eomans x. 12. 

t Exodus x:^. 3, $ Genesis ii. 2. 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIH. 137 

the first concern of all is to save the poor workers from 
the cruelty of grasping speculators, who use human 
beings as mere instruments for making money. It is 
neither justice nor humanity so to grind men down with 
excessive labor as to stupefy their minds and wear out 
their bodies. Man's powers, like his general nature, are 
limited, and beyond these limits he cannot go. His 
strength is developed and increased by use and exercise, 
but only on condition of due intermission and proper 
rest. Daily labor, therefore, must be so regulated that 
it may not be protracted during longer hours than 
strength admits. How many and how long the intervals 
of rest should be, will depend on the nature of the work, 
on circumstances of time and place, and on the health 
and strength of the workman. Those who labor in 
mines and quarries, and in work within the bowels of 
the earth, should have shorter hours in proportion as 
their labor is more severe and more trying to health. 
Then, again, the season of the year must be taken into 
account ; for not unfrequently a kind of labor is easy at 
one time which at another is intolerable or very difficult. 
Finally, work which is suitable for a strong man cannot 
reasonably be required from a woman or a child. And, 
in regard to children, great care should be taken not to 
place them in workshops and factories until their bodies 
and minds are sufficiently mature. For just as rough 
weather destroys the buds of Spring, so too early an 
experience of life's hard work blights the young promise 
of a child's powers, and makes any real education impos- 
sible. Women, again, are not suited to certain trades; 
for a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it 
is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her 
modesty and to promote the good bringing up of children 
and the well-being of the family. As a general principle 
it may be laid down that a workman ought to have 



138 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

leisure and rest in proportion to the wear and tear of his 
strength ; for the waste of strength must be repaired by 
the cessation of work. 

46. In all agreements between masters and work-people 
there is always the condition, expressed or understood, 
that there be allowed proper rest for soul and body. To 
agree in any other sense would be against what is right 
and just j, for it can never be right or just to require on 
the one side, or to promise on the other, the giving up of 
those duties which a man owes to his Grod and to himself. 

47. We now approach a subject of very great impor- 
tance, and one on which, if extremes are to be avoided, 
right ideas are absolutely necessary. Wages, we are 
told, are fixed by free consent; and, therefore, the 
employer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done 
his part and is not called upon for anything further. 
The only way, it is said, in which injustice could happen 
would be if the master refused to pay the whole of the 
wages, or the workman would not complete the work 
undertaken ; when this happens the State should inter- 
vene, to see that each obtains his own— but not under 
any other circumstances. 

48. This mode of reasoning is by no means convincing 
to a fair-minded man, for there are important considera- 
tions which it leaves out of view altogether. To labor is 
to exert one's self for the sake of procuring what is neces- 
sary for the purposes of life, and most of all for self-pres- 
ervation. In the sweat of thy hrow thou shalt eat bread* 
Therefore a man's labor has two notes or characters. 
First of all, it is personal, for the exertion of individual 
power belongs to the individual who puts it forth, 
employing this power for that personal profit for which 
it was given. Secondly, man's labor is necessary, for 

* Genesis iii. 19. 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 139 

without the results of labor a man cannot live ; and self- 
conservation is a law of Nature, which it is wrong to 
disobey. Now, if we were to consider labor merely so 
far as it is personalj doubtless it would be within the 
workman's right to accept any rate of wages whatever j 
for in the same way as he is free to work or not, so he is 
free to accept a small remuneration or even none at all. 
But this is a mere abstract supposition 5 the labor of the 
working-man is not only his personal attribute, but it is 
necessary ; and this makes all the difference. The preser- 
vation of life is the bounden duty of each and all, and to 
fail therein is a crime. It follows that each one has a 
right to procure what is required in order to live, and 
the poor can procure it in no other way than by work 
and wages. 

49. Let it be granted then that, as a rule, workman 
and employer should make free agreements, and in partic- 
ular should freely agree as to wages ; nevertheless, there 
is a dictate of nature more imperious and more ancient 
than any bargain between man and man, that the remu- 
neration must be enough to support the wage-earner in 
reasonable and frugal comfort. If through necessity or 
fear of a worse evil the workman accepts harder condi- 
tions because an employer or a contractor will give him 
no better, he is the victim of force and injustice. In 
these and similar questions, however — such as, for 
example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sani- 
tary precautions to be observed in factories and work- 
shops, etc.— in order to supersede undue interference on 
the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, 
and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse 
be had to Societies or Boards such as We shall mention 
presently, or to some other method of safeguarding the 
interests of wage-earners; the State to be asked for 
approval and protection. 



140 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

50. If a workman^s wages be sufficient to enable him 
to maintain himself, his wife, and his children in reason- 
able comfort, he will not find it difficult, if he is a sensible 
man, to study economy ; and he will not fail, by cutting 
down expenses, to put by a little property 5 nature and 
reason would urge him to this. We have seen that this 
great Labor question cannot be solved except by assum- 
ing as a principle that private ownership must be held 
sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor 
ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many of 
the people as possible to become owners. 

51. Many excellent results will follow from this ; and 
first of aU, property will certainly become more equitably 
divided. For the effect of civil change and revolution 
has been to divide society into two widely differing 
castes. On the one side there is the party which holds 
the power because it holds the wealth; which has in its 
grasp all labor and all trade, which manipulates for its 
own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of 
supply, and which is powerfully represented in the coun- 
cils of the State itself. On the other side there is the 
needy and powerless multitude, sore and suffering, and 
always ready for disturbance. If working-people can be 
encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the 
land, the result will be that the gulf between vast wealth 
and deep poverty will be bridged over, and the two 
orders will be brought nearer together. Another conse- 
quence will be the greater abundance of the fruits of the 
earth. Men always work harder and more readily when 
they work on that which is their own ; nay, they learn to 
love the very soil which yields in response to the labor of 
their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of 
good things for themselves and those that are dear to 
them. It is evident how such a spirit of willing labor 
would add to the produce of the earth and to the wealth 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 141 

of the community. And a tliird advantage would arise 
from this : men would cling to the country in which they 
were bornj for no one would exchange his country for 
a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of liv- 
ing a tolerable and happy life. These three important 
benefits, however, can only be expected on the condition 
that a man's means be not drained and exhausted by 
excessive taxation. The right to possess private property 
is from nature, not from man ; and the State has only 
the right to regulate its use in the interests of the public 
good, but by no means to abolish it altogether. The 
State is therefore unjust and cruel if, in the name of 
taxation, it deprives the private owner of more than is 
just. 

52. In the last place— employers and workmen may 
themselves effect much in the matter of which We treat, 
by means of those institutions and organizations which 
afford opportune assistance to those in need, and which 
draw the two orders more closely together. Among 
these may be enumerated: Societies for mutual help; 
various foundations established by private persons for 
providing for the workman, and for his widow or his 
orphans, in sudden calamity, in sickness, and in the 
event of death; and what are called "patronages" or 
institutions for the care of boys and girls, for young 
people and also for those of more mature age. 

53. The most important of all are Workmen's Asso- 
ciations ; for these virtually include all the rest. History 
attests what excellent results were effected by the Artifi- 
cers' Guilds of a former day. They were the means not 
only of many advantages to the workmen, but in no 
small degree of the advancement of art, as numerous 
monuments remain to prove. Such associations should 
be adapted to the requirements of the age in which we 
live— an age of greater instruction, of different customs, 



142 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

and of more numerous requirements in daily life. It is 
gratifying to know that there are actually in existence 
not a few Societies of this nature, consisting either of 
workmen alone or of workmen and employers together; 
but it were greatly to be desired that they should mul- 
tiply and become more effective. We have spoken of 
them more than once ; but it will be well to explain here 
how much they are needed, to show that they exist by 
their own right, and to enter into their organization and 
their work. 

54. The experience of his own weakness urges man to 
call in help from without. We read in the pages of Holy 
Writ : It is better that two should he together than one ; for 
they have the advantage of their society. If one fall he shall 
he supported hy the other. Woe to him that is alone, for 
tvhen he falleth he hath none to lift him up.* And further : 
A hrother that is helped hy his hrother is like a strong city.] 
It is this natural impulse which unites men in civil 
society; and it is this also which makes them band 
themselves together in associations of citizen with citizen ; 
associations which, it is true, cannot be called societies 
in the complete sense of the word, but which are societies 
nevertheless. 

55. These lesser societies and the society which consti- 
tutes the State differ in many things, because their imme- 
diate purpose and end is different. Civil society exists 
for the common good, and therefore is concerned with 
the interests of all in general, and with individual inter. 
ests in their due place and proportion. Hence it is called 
puhlic society, because by its means, as St. Thomas of 
Aquin says, Men communicate with one another in the 
setting up of a commonwealth.^ But the societies which 
are formed in the bosom of the State are called private, 

* Ecclesiastes iv. 9, 10. t Proverbs xviii. 19. 

t Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem, Cap. XL 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XUI. 143 

and justly so, because their immediate purpose is the 
private advantage of the associates. Now a private 
society, says St. Thomas again, is one which is formed for 
the purpose of carrying out private business ; as when two or 
three enter into a partnership with the view of trading in 
conjunction* Particular societies, then, although they 
exist within the State, and are each a part of the State, 
nevertheless cannot be prohibited by the State absolutely 
and as such. For to enter into "society" of this kind is 
the natural right of manj and the State must protect 
natural rights, not destroy themj and if it forbids its 
citizens to form associations, it contradicts the very prin- 
ciple of its own existence ; for both they and it exist in 
virtue of the same principle, viz., the natural propensity 
of man to live in society. 

56. There are times, no doubt, when it is right that 
the law should interfere to prevent association j as when 
men join together for purposes which are evidently bad, 
unjust, or dangerous to the State. In such cases the 
public authority may justly forbid the formation of asso- 
ciations, and may dissolve them when they already exist. 
But every precaution should be taken not to violate the 
rights of individuals and not to make unreasonable regu- 
lations under the pretense of public benefit. For laws 
only bind when they are in accordance with right reason, 
and therefore with the eternal law of God.t 

57. And here we are reminded of the Confraternities, 
Societies, and Religious Orders, which have arisen by the 
Church's authority and the piety of the Christian people. 

* Ibid. 

+ "Human law is law only in virtue of its accordance with right 
reason: and thus it is manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And 
in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in 
such case it is not law at all, hut rather a species of violence."— ^t. 
Thomas of Aquin, Summa Theologica, la 2ae Q. xciii. Art. 3. 



144 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

The annals of every nation down to our own times testify 
to what they have done for the human race. It is indis- 
putable, on grounds of reason alone, that such associa- 
tions, being perfectly blameless in their objects, have the 
sanction of the law of nature. On their religious side 
they rightly claim to be responsible to the Church alone. 
The administrators of the State, therefore, have no rights 
over them, nor can they claim any share in their manage- 
ment ; on the contrary, it is the State's duty to respect 
and cherish them, and, if necessary, to defend them from 
attack. It is notorious that a very different course has 
been followed, more especially in our own times. In 
many places the State has laid violent hands on these 
communities, and committed manifold injustice against 
them 5 it has placed them under the civil law, taken away 
their rights as corporate bodies, and robbed them of their 
property. In such property the Church had her rights, 
each member of the body had his or her rights, and there 
were also the rights of those who had founded or 
endowed them for a definite purpose, and of those for 
whose benefit and assistance they existed. Wherefore 
"We cannot refrain from complaining of such spoliation 
as unjust and fraught with evil results; and with the 
more reason because, at the very time when the law pro- 
claims that association is free to all. We see that Catholic 
societies, however peaceable and useful, are hindered in 
every way, whilst the utmost freedom is given to men 
whose objects are at once hurtful to Religion and dan- 
gerous to the State. 

58. Associations of every kind, and especially those of 
working-men, are now far more common than formerly. 
In regard to many of these there is no need at present to 
inquire whence they spring, what are their objects, or 
what means they use. But there is a good deal of evi- 
dence which goes to prove that many of these societies 



. ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIIL 145 

are in the hands of invisible leaders, and are managed on 
principles far from compatible with Christianity and the 
public well-being ; and that they do their best to get into 
their hands the whole field of labor and to force workmen 
either to join them or to starve. Under these circum- 
stances Christian workmen must do one of two things : 
either join Associations in which their religion will be 
exposed to peril, or form associations among themselves 
— unite their forces and courageously shake off the yoke 
of an unjust and intolerable oppression. No one who 
does not wish to expose man's chief good to extreme 
danger will hesitate to say that the second alternative 
must by all means be adopted. 

59. Those Catholics are worthy of all praise— and 
there are not a few— who, understanding what the times 
require, have, by various enterprises and experiments, 
endeavored to better the condition of the working-people 
without any sacrifice of principle. They have taken up 
the cause of the working-man, and have striven to make 
both families and individuals better off; to infuse the 
spirit of justice into the mutual relations of employer 
and employed; to keep before the eyes of both classes 
the precepts of duty and the laws of the Gospel— that 
Gospel which, by inculcating self-restraint, keeps men 
within the bounds of moderation, and tends to establish 
harmony among the divergent interests and various 
classes which compose the State. It is with such ends 
in view that We see men of eminence meeting together 
for discussion, for the promotion of united action, and 
for practical work. Others, again, strive to unite work- 
ing-people of various kinds into associations, help them 
with their advice and their means, and enable them to 
obtain honest and profitable work. The Bishops, on 
their part, bestow their ready good will and support; 
and with their approval and guidance many members of 



146 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

the clergy, both secular and regular, labor assiduously 
on behalf of the spiritual and mental interests of the 
members of Associations. And there are not wanting 
Catholics possessed of afluence who have, as it were, cast 
in their lot with the wage-earners, and who have spent 
large sums in founding and widely spreading Benefit and 
Insurance Societies ; by means of which the working-man 
may without difficulty acquire by his labor not only 
many present advantages, but also the certainty of 
honorable support in time to come. How much this 
multiplied and earnest activity has benefited the com- 
munity at large is too well known to require Us to dwell 
upon it. We find in it the grounds of the most cheering 
hope for the future ; provided that the Associations We 
have described continue to grow and spread, and are well 
and wisely administered. Let the State watch over these 
Societies of citizens united together in the exercise of 
their right ; but let it not thrust itself into their peculiar 
concerns and their organization ; for things move and live 
by the soul within them, and they may be killed by the 
grasp of a hand from without. 

60. In order that an Association may be carried on 
with unity of purpose and harmony of action, its organi- 
zation and government must be firm and wise. All such 
Societies, being free to exist, have the further right to 
adopt such rules and organization as may best conduce 
to the attainment of their objects. We do not deem it 
possible to enter into definite details on the subject of 
organization : this must depend on national character, on 
practice and experience, on the nature and scope of the 
work to be done, on the magnitude of the various trades 
and employments, and on other circumstances of fact 
and of time— all of which must be carefuUy weighed. 

61. Speaking summarily, we may lay it down as a 
general and perpetual law, that Workmen's Associations 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XHI. 147 

should be so organized and governed as to furnish the 
best and most suitable means for attaining what is aimed 
at, that is to say, for helping each individual member to 
better his condition to the utmost in body, mind, and 
property. It is clear that they must pay special and 
principal attention to piety and morality, and that their 
internal discipline must be directed precisely by these 
considerations; otherwise they entirely lose their special 
character, and come to be very little better than those 
Societies which take no account of Religion at all. What 
advantage can it be to a Workman to obtain by means 
of a Society all that he requires, and to endanger his 
soul for want of spiritual food ? What doth it profit a 
man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own 
soulf* This, as Our Lord teaches, is the note or char- 
acter that distinguishes the Christian from the heathen. 
After all these things do the heathens seek. . . . SeeJc ye 
first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these 
things shall he added unto you.f Let our associations, 
then, look first and before all to Grod; let religious 
instruction have therein a foremost place, each one being 
carefully taught what is his duty to God, what to beheve, 
what to hope for, and how to work out his salvation; 
and let all be warned and fortified with especial solicitude 
against wrong opinions and false teaching. Let the 
working-man be urged and led to the worship of God, to 
the earnest practice of religion, and, among other things, 
to the sanctification of Sundays and festivals. Let him 
learn to reverence and love Holy Church, the common 
Mother of us all; and so to obey the precepts and to 
frequent the Sacraments of the Church, those Sacra- 
ments being the means ordained by God for obtaining 
forgiveness of sin and for leading a holy life. 

* St. Matthew xvi. 26. t St. Matthew vi. 32, 33. 



148 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

62. The foundations of the organization being laid in 
Religion, We next go on to determine the relations of the 
members one to another, in order that they may live 
together in concord and go on prosperously and success- 
fully. The offices and charges of the Society should be 
distributed for the good of the Society itseK, and in such 
manner that difference in degree or position should not 
interfere with unanimity and good will. Office-bearers 
should be appointed with prudence and discretion, and 
each one's charge should be carefully marked out ; thus 
no member will suffer wrong. Let the common funds 
be administered with the strictest honesty, in such way 
that a member receive assistance in proportion to his 
necessities. The rights and duties of employers should 
be the subject of careful consideration as compared with 
the rights and duties of the employed. If it should 
happen that either a master or a workman deemed 
himself injured, nothing would be more desirable than 
that there should be a committee composed of honest and 
capable men of the Association itself, whose duty it 
should be, by the laws of the Association, to decide the 
dispute. Among the purposes of a Society should be to 
try to arrange for a continuous supply of work at all 
times and seasons ; and to create a fund from which the 
members may be helped in their necessities, not only in 
cases of accident, but also in sickness, old age, and mis- 
fortune. 

63. Such rules and regulations, if obeyed willingly by 
all, will sufficiently insure the well-being of poor people -, 
whilst such mutual Associations among Catholics are 
certain to be productive, in no small degree, of prosper- 
ity to the State. It is not rash to conjecture the future 
from the past. Age gives way to age, but the events of 
one century are wonderfully like those of another; for 
they are directed by the Providence of God, Who over- 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO Xm. 149 

rules the course of history in accordance with His pur- 
poses in creating the race of man. We are told that it 
was cast as a reproach on the Christians of the early 
ages of the Church, that the greater number of them had 
to live by begging or by labor. Yet, destitute as they 
were of wealth and influence, they ended by winning 
over to their side the favor of the rich and the good will 
of the powerful. They showed themselves industrious, 
laborious, and peaceful, men of justice, and, above all, 
men of brotherly love. In the presence of such a hfe 
and such an example prejudice disappeared, the tongue 
of malevolence was silenced, and the lying traditions of 
ancient superstition yielded little by little to Christian 
truth. 

64. At this moment the condition of the working popu- 
lation is the question of the hour • and nothing can be of 
higher interest to all classes of the State than that it 
should be rightly and reasonably decided. But it will 
be easy for Christian working-men to decide it right if 
they form Associations, choose wise guides, and follow 
the same path which with so much advantage to them- 
selves and the commonwealth was trod by their fathers 
before them. Prejudice, it is true, is mighty, and so is 
the love of money j but if the sense of what is just and 
right be not destroyed by depravity of heart, their 
fellow-citizens are sure to be won over to a kindly feeling 
toward men whom they see to be so industrious and so 
modest, who so unmistakably prefer honesty to lucre, 
and the sacredness of duty to all other considerations. 

65. And another great advantage would result from 
the state of things We are describing : there would be so 
much more hope and possibility of recalling to a sense 
of their duty those working-men who have either given 
up their faith altogether, or whose lives are at variance 
with its precepts. These men, in most cases, feel that 



150 THE CONDITION OF LABOR. 

they have been fooled by empty promises and deceived 
by false appearances. They cannot but perceive that 
their grasping employers too often treat them with the 
greatest inhumanity and hardly care for them beyond 
the profit their labor brings; and if they belong to an 
Association, it is probably one in which there exists, in 
place of charity and love, that intestine strife which 
always accompanies unresigned and irreligious poverty. 
Broken in spirit and worn down in body, how many of 
them would gladly free themselves from this galling 
slavery ! But human respect, or the dread of starvation, 
makes them afraid to take the step. To such as these 
Catholic Associations are of incalculable service, helping 
them out of their dif&culties, inviting them to companion- 
ship, and receiving the repentant to a shelter in which 
they may securely trust. 

66. "We have now laid before you. Venerable Brethren, 
who are the persons, and what are the means, by which 
this most difficult question must be solved. Every one 
must put his hand to the work which falls to his share, 
and that at once and immediately, lest the evil which is 
already so great may by delay become absolutely beyond 
remedy. Those who rule the State must use the law and 
the institutions of the country; masters and rich men 
must remember their duty ; the poor whose interests are 
at stake, must make every lawful and proper effort ; and 
since Religion alone, as We said at the beginning, can 
destroy the evil at its root, all men must be persuaded 
that the primary thing needful is to return to real Chris- 
tianity, in the absence of which all the plans and devices 
of the wisest will be of little avail. 

67. As far as regards the Church, its assistance will 
never be wanting, be the time or the occasion what it 
may; and it will intervene with the greater effect in 
proportion as its liberty of action is the more unfettered : 



ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII. 151 

let this be carefully noted by those whose office it is to 
provide for the public welfare. Every minister of holy 
Religion must throw into the conflict all the energy of 
his mind and all the strength of his endurance; with 
your authority, Venerable Brethren, and by your 
example, they must never cease to urge upon all men of 
every class, upon the high as well as the lowly, the 
Gospel doctrines of Christian life; by every means in 
their power they must strive for the good of the people ; 
and above all they must earnestly cherish in themselves, 
and try to arouse in others, Charity, the mistress and 
queen of virtues. For the happy results we all long for 
must be chiefly brought about by the plenteous outpour- 
ing of Charity; of that true Christian Charity which is 
the fulflUing of the whole Gospel law, which is always 
ready to sacrifice itself for others' sake, and which is 
man's surest antidote against worldly pride and immoder- 
ate love of self; that Charity whose office is described 
and whose Godlike features are drawn by the Apostle St. 
Paul in these words: Charity is patient, is Mnd . . . 
seeJceth not her own . . . suffereth all things . . . endureth 
all things.* 

68. On each one of you. Venerable Brethren, and on 
your Clergy and people, as an earnest of God's mercy and 
a mark of Our affection, We lovingly in the Lord bestow 
the Apostolic Benediction. 

Given at St. Peter's, in Eome, the fifteenth day of May, 
1891, the fourteenth year of Our Pontificate. 

LEO XIII., POPE. 

* 1 Corinthians xiii. 4-7. 



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